Pop-up card (Architecture in Himeji City)
It’s been a while since I made a pop-up card of modern Japanese architecture.
This time, I only have one card.
The model is the former head office of the Aboshi Bank in Himeji City.
The building was used as a women’s clothing store from around 1970, but was closed in 2015. Currently, Google map shows it as “Former Aboshi Bank Minato Club", so it seems to be in the process of being put to use.
The pattern is able to download. Cutting the windows may be a hassle, but you can try it if you like.
This is a photo taken from behind with lighting.
On a different note, when I was looking around about Himeji, I found a picture of the “Shikama Prefectural Office".
Himeji Prefecture was established in the former Himeji domain in April 1871. And in November of the same year, the prefectures in Harima were merged to form the new Himeji Prefecture.
But for some reason, the prefecture’s name was changed to “Shikama Prefecture" within a week of the merger.
I haven’t done a thorough research yet, so I don’t know exactly when it was built, but this was the Shikama Prefectural Office built in the early Meiji period.
But by the way. Later, Shikama Prefecture was merged with Hyogo Prefecture and abolished in the second round of prefectural consolidation. That was in 1876. So the building seems to have been used only a little as a prefectural office.
After that, it seems to have been used as a branch office(?) of the prefecture. Then in 1902, the prefectural hospital came to use this building. That’s why in the photo above, the name “Himeji Hospital" is written.
In 1908, this hospital became under the management of the Japanese Red Cross Society and became the Himeji Hospital of the Hyogo Branch of the Japanese Red Cross Society.
I found an explanation of the Japanese Red Cross Himeji Hospital in the “Himeji City History: 30th Anniversary of the Establishment of the City" (1919), and it says that the main building and attached houses were destroyed by fire on November 6, 1914. So the old Shikama Prefectural Office building must have been lost at that time.
I would like to make a card someday using a lost building in Himeji as a model.
[postscript]
(2021.3.22) the pattern was closed.