In Qingdao’s old quarter, where cobblestones echo German-built streets, a crimson landmark rises—the Former Site of Laishou Pharmacy. Locals call it the “Red House,” a four-story Jugendstil masterpiece completed in 1905. Its walls, clad in scarlet tiles and granite, have witnessed empires, wars, and rebirths.

The building’s story begins with Adalbert Larz, a German pharmacist who leased the ground floor in 1905 to open Qingdao’s first private pharmacy. Beyond medicines, Larz sold indulgences: French perfume, Swiss chocolate, Cuban cigars. His Red Cross Pharmacy catered to colonial tastes, while the upper floors housed residents in apartments warmed by coal stoves.

Architecturally, the building is a symphony of curves and symbols. Oak leaf patterns bloom across its facade, crafted from reddish-brown tiles. A carved crest crowns the attic—a staff entwined by a serpent, the ancient emblem of healing. Granite eaves jut like stone eyebrows, shielding arched dormer windows. Even the chimneys are adorned, their brickwork swirling with Jugendstil whimsy.

Larz’s success let him buy the entire building, but history intervened. During Japan’s 1914 siege of Qingdao, his property was seized. By the 1930s, the Okazaki corporation occupied it. After 1949, it became a government office, then a restaurant.

Today, the building guards a new legacy as the Laoshan Mineral Water Museum. Visitors trace fingertips over original oak floorboards, worn smooth by German pharmacists, Japanese clerks, and Chinese bureaucrats. The basement, once storing Larz’s imported soap, now exhibits Qingdao’s famed springwater in glass bottles. This building remains, a four-story structure of brick, stone, steel, and wood, its 1,996 square meters holding layers of trade, conflict, and civic life within its vivid walls.