Dayuanzi Historic Building

In 2015 chairwoman Guo Shuzhen of the construction company 力麒建設 won National Taiwan University's ROT contract, and restoration took nearly three and a half years. Because local residents called the building complex 'Dayuanzi' (the big courtyard), it opened to the public under that name after restoration. Dayuanzi was built in the Japanese colonial period. According to the old ridge plaque, the building was designed and put out to tender by the accounts section of the secretariat of the Office of the Governor-General of Taiwan, with 塜本與之助 as the builder, and the ridgepole-raising ceremony was held on 8 March 1931 (the sixth year of the Showa era). There are two accounts of its history. One, from the official record on the Ministry of Culture's cultural heritage information network, is that it was built for the Japanese navy's 水交社, a guest house or club for naval officers. The other is that it was housing for single staff of Taipei Imperial University in the Japanese era. For either account, no first-hand historical source confirms its original purpose and function.

Translated and shortened by DealTaipei from Taiwan's national tourism database. Sources are on the terms page.