Innovation Tower - An unmissable skyline along the Suzhou River
Innovation Tower is located at No. 100 Yejiazha Road, the former site of the Shanghai Garment Factory, transformed from a century-old historical building on the banks of the Suzhou River.
The original site still houses a three-story warehouse with a lookout tower, covering an area of nearly 10,000 square meters. Built in the early years of the Republic of China by a German designer, it adopted the advanced reinforced concrete frame structure of the time. Different from the previous factory buildings that were mainly Western neoclassical and East India styles, this is one of the earliest modern-style buildings in China.
The bright red color under the tower's round arch ceiling jumps out from the pristine facade, breaking the seriousness brought by the uniform rectangular window bands on the upper and lower walls, and its image has become the symbol of the Innovation Tower park.
Hidden within the park are many popular photo spots, including exquisite antique shops (Xiaofangting Antique Museum, pictures 4-6), restaurants that have been featured in TV dramas, and a must-visit collection of domestic and foreign outstanding niche designers for fashionistas.
Moreover, the park brings together trendy shops such as skateboarding, graffiti (pictures 7-8), and tattooing, offering a trendy and interesting borderless lifestyle and multi-dimensional value experience. All these have gradually made the park a gathering place for trendy fashion.
Today, Innovation Tower has become an urban youth shared business community that integrates work, life, and entertainment, and is also an unmissable skyline along the Suzhou River.
Initially, this was an advanced yarn factory. After the reform and opening up, with industrial upgrading, the factory was relocated, and the building with the lookout tower was used as a large warehouse. The cargo elevators from the early years are still preserved on the east and west sides of the warehouse.
The most attractive spot for tourists in Innovation Tower is the rooftop platform on the 4th floor of Building 1 (pictures 14-17), with wooden floors and potted plants of flowers and vines scattered around, a quiet haven away from the hustle and bustle.
From the rooftop platform, you can overlook Baocheng Bay on both sides of Yejiazha Road (picture 18), which was once the most concentrated area of Shanghai's yarn factories. Inside the bay is the only double-arched pedestrian bridge over the Suzhou River - Baocheng Bridge (pictures 19-20), hence the name Baocheng Bay.
Also, because of the concentration of yarn factories, it was known as 'Yarn Factory Bay'. By the 1920s, the Baocheng Bay area had formed a massive textile enterprise cluster, the cradle and high-density gathering area of China's textile industry, accounting for 20% of the national textile industry, and was Shanghai's most important textile industry concentration area. After liberation, enterprises such as the First, Sixth, and Seventh Cotton Mills formed a textile cluster here.
Time flies, and today's Baocheng Bay has turned into a residential area with high-rise buildings, beautiful campuses, trendy office areas, and popular night markets...