Hangzhou Shikumen Lane Houses: The Listed Stone-Gate Lanes

In brief

Lane houses, called lilong or, after their stone door frames, shikumen, are terraces of two-storey houses along a narrow lane entered through a gateway. The type spread from Shanghai to Hangzhou between the 1910s and the 1930s. Several of Hangzhou's listed lanes stand east of West Lake; Sixinfang, for example, was built on land of the Qing banner garrison that was cleared in 1913.

How a lane works

A gateway on the street opens onto a main lane, with numbered side lanes off it. Each house has its own stone door frame and a small front courtyard, a hall on the ground floor and rooms above. Developers built the lanes to rent or sell, mixing a Chinese courtyard plan with Western terraced building, which is why the listing descriptions so often call them a transition from traditional to modern housing. The type is better known from Shanghai, where it is called lilong.

Sixinfang, a lane quarter by the lake

Building Cluster at Sixinfang Alley shows how such a quarter came about. In 1913 the Qing banner garrison beside West Lake was cleared and the land sold; the silk merchant Chen Xin bought this plot, and its first row of 24 brick-and-timber houses was finished in 1926. It is now a protected historic block with a small exhibition on its history at No. 1 Xiaonü Road.

All 19 on the list

Sources

Hangzhou Memory groups the buildings by type from their names and descriptions; the city's lists do not classify them. Names and descriptions come from English Wikipedia's batch lists, and Chinese names, periods and addresses from 杭州市历史建筑 on Chinese Wikipedia, both CC BY-SA 4.0.