Chen Fu-li Mansion

A two-storey mansion built in the late 1920s for Chen Fu-li (陳復禮), a coal mining magnate who served as village chief of Songshan (松山庄長) and later the Taipei city assembly. It looked out over the Keelung River from what is now a back lane behind Raohe Night Market, and its upper balcony, hung with a plaque inscribed Xinkuang Shenyi (心曠神怡) in 1932, became the meeting place of the Song Poetry Society (松社) that Chen founded after leaving office.

Chen’s second son was Chen Kung-pei (陳拱北), a physician remembered as the father of public health in Taiwan, but neither this connection nor two decades on the Department of Cultural Affairs watch list, during which no survey was ever conducted, protected the property. In May 2021 a developer knocked down most of the building without a demolition permit; the city designated what remained a municipal monument that September over the owner’s objections, and the site remains a partial ruin mired in legal limbo into the late 2020s.