Chung Shan T’ang

Over the past couple of years, I've posted four separate pieces about the Bob Hope USO show that came to Taipei in 1962.   Hope described Taiwan as an island "bounded on the east by the magnificent Pacific Ocean and on the west by the beautiful 7th Fleet."

At the time I wrote those pieces, nobody could remember exactly where the show was held.  Until today, that is.  Les Duffin sent me some photos of the location and identified it as the Chung Shan Hall.  Here are his comments:

Here are the photos I mentioned earlier of Chung Shan T’ang – Chung Shan Hall.  We Americans had a habit of calling it Taipei City Hall, which was misleading.  We should have called it the Taipei City Auditorium or maybe just Chung Shan Hall.  This was the site of Bob Hope’s Christmas 1962 show and of many other concerts and shows.  I was there at least twice, the first time for the Hope show, and again for the Double Ten Day concert in October 1966.  I was poking around on Google Earth a couple of weeks ago, looking to see how much Hsimending has changed now that the Hsin Sheng Theater and the Chung Hua Market buildings are long gone and was amazed to see that the hall is still there.  I wonder if it is still the main venue for major concerts and state shows in Taipei?

This is a shot I took in the 70s, probably in 1972 or 73.  On the left is the tri-level Chung Hua Market and on the right the Hsin Sheng Theater.  Just behind the theater, the dull-looking brown building is the rear of Chung Shan Hall.

This one is similar to the above photo, this shows a better view of the building’s rear.  I’m not sure where I got this photo but I probably pulled it off the internet somewhere.

This is Chung Shan T’ang:  I took this badly-lighted shot of the front of the hall in 1963, not long after the Hope show.

And these two photos are ones I pulled down from Google Earth – the present day hall!

******** UPDATE ********

As a result of the comments to this article, Les sent the following additional comments and photograph.

I believe the attached photo is of a court building that was somewhere in the general vicinity of CS Hall.  I don’t recall exactly where it was, but my photos of the two buildings were sequential which means this was the next shot I took after the one of the hall.  I believe this was in fact a court building of some sort and you’ll notice how similar it is in appearance to CS Hall.