Former Site of Manchuria Sumitomo Metal Kabushiki Kaisha, Shenyang

In November 1937, the Japanese Sumitomo group built a steelworks at No. 8 Xinghua North Street in Shenyang‘s Tiexi District. By January 1938, this facility became the Manchuria Sumitomo Metal Industries, Ltd., the largest factory in the district. Today, the surviving Second Metalworking Workshop stands as a monument to the region’s shifting fortunes.

The architecture reflects mid-20th-century heavy manufacturing. Thick, black steel columns support a large-span steel truss structure, eliminating the need for internal walls. Overhead, a sawtooth-shaped roof features red brick exterior walls and north-facing glass windows. These windows once provided glare-free natural light and passive ventilation for the laborers below. Suspended five to six meters above the ground, the original overhead bridge crane system still hangs from gantry tracks, its massive metal hooks designed to lift loads exceeding ten tons.

Human hands repeatedly reshaped this space. In August 1945, occupying Soviet forces systematically dismantled most of the factory's equipment—generators, steelmaking furnaces, and heavy machine tools—leaving behind empty brick shells. The Nationalist government's Resource Commission took over these hollow structures in March 1946, operating them briefly as the Shenyang Steel Tire Factory.

A new era began in November 1948 when the Northeast People's Government assumed control. Renamed the Shenyang Heavy Machinery Plant in 1953, the plant became a cornerstone of Chinese heavy industry. Workers here achieved over forty national firsts, including casting the nation's first batch of molten steel.

On May 18, 2009, the factory prepared to relocate. Before the fires cooled, workers gathered to pour the plant's final run of molten steel, casting two massive characters spelling "Tiexi." Each block weighs three tons. Today, these blocks sit on the exterior wall of the 1905 Cultural and Creative Park, near the twenty-six-meter-tall steel sculpture, "Chi Qian Ren" (The Steel Rod Holder).

The workshop itself has transitioned into the 1905 Cultural and Creative Park. The original steel frames and red brick walls remain intact, now sheltering art galleries, creative studios, and cafes. Designated as a municipal-level protected relic in 2013, the building preserves the physical weight of its industrial past while serving a new generation.