Santa Maria Girls Middle School was founded in 1881 and was a school for the girls of Shanghai’s aristocratic families. Then in 1923, a new campus, St Mary’s Hall, was built here on Changning Street. In the meantime, St Mary’s Hall has grown into the city’s modern infrastructure, but fortunately has not been lost to posterity.
Glass fronts tower up next to the old college and a German Paulaner sells pork knuckles on the other side of the small park.
The different worlds meet here on this small spot in Shanghai. Fortunately, not everything fell victim to demolition then, as was so often the case with other historic buildings.
