The Former Talati House Hotel, now Tianjin First Hotel was situated at 158 North Jiefang Road, Heping District and it is now an important protection historic architecture in Tianjin. S.B.TALATI, the founder of the hotel, used to be an Indian tramp in Bombay.
In the early 1900s, he came to China and first started running a small shop and then Talati Estates Limited. After he earned his first barrel of gold, Talati managed to become a British citizen and set his foot in real estate. In 1929, Talati and Laidlaw, a British joined hands to build Talati House Hotel. But later Talati drove his partner away and made the hotel his own.
In 1936, Talati built a six-storied building to the north of the hotel and joined the two buildings to a larger hotel which covers an area of some 1800 square meters and has a floor area of about 7600 square meters. This reinforced concrete frame building was designed by the Credit Foncier d'Extreme Orient. The first two floors were used for business while the top four were apartments of which each had its separate living room, dining room, kitchen and toilet.
Those luxury ones even had servers and maid rooms. With most of its facade covered with tawny pitting surface front bricks alternating with square granitic plasters, and plain classic patterns as decoration, the Talati House Hotel looks elegant and its harmonious colors and sense of unity emphasize the characteristics of modern architecture.
