, looking north, c.1926. A corner of the burnt down
Hong Kong Hotel is visible on the right. There were three buildings on the site between 1905 and 1958, namely Mansions Building (Hotel Mansions, later renamed Union Building), King's Building and York Building.
Union Building in the 1920s. The building on the left is King's Building, and the adjacent, slightly taller one is Union Building. Following the
Praya reclamation of 1890–1904, a building was constructed and opened in 1905, that served as offices of Canadian Pacific Ocean Services (G/F) and
Hong Kong, Canton & Macao Steamboat Company (1/F). This building was acquired in 1921, and used as its headquarters by the
Union Insurance Society of Canton Ltd., and then became known as Union Building (). It was bought by The Hongkong Land Company in 1946, and was demolished in 1950. Hongkong Land later acquired the adjacent King's Building and demolished it in 1958 to complete the Union House complex.
King's Building King's Building was built in 1905 and was for some time home to Marconi Wireless. The building was located along Connaught Road, next to the Union Building. It was demolished in 1958.
York Building York Building was built in 1905 and demolished in 1958.
Swire House The 23-storey building, initially called
Union House (), was completed in 1962, and had a total floor space of 34,000 square metres (370,000 sq ft). in the 1970s, the
Swire Group, gained naming rights for the building, which was renamed
Swire House () in 1976. Chater House has a total floor area of 438,500 net sq.ft. (498,000 sq ft. gross), was designed by architects Kohn Pedersen Fox. It was originally configured into 30 floors – 474,000 net sq. ft – of office accommodation above a three-level retail podium of 45,000 net sq.ft. (81,000 sq ft. gfa) and a three-level basement, which includes 112 parking spaces. When the project was announced, in 1997, the estimated cost was HK$2.3 billion, and would complete in 2003. The main contractor was
Gammon Construction. The building is linked to the
Central Elevated Walkway, also owned by Hong Kong Land. In 2014, the display of
Antony Gormley's art installation
Event Horizon at Chater House was cancelled when US investment bank
JPMorgan, which has offices in the building, asked
Hongkong Land – the sponsor of
Event Horizon – to cancel its support for the show after bank employee Dennis Li Junjie jumped to his death from the building's roof. ==Tenants==