Technology History | 光華數位新天地 — The Market That Outlived Its Bridge

A slab of marble stands in a planting bed beside this building, mounted at eye level in a steel frame. It reads 光華橋, signed 嚴家淦題 and dated the sixtieth year of the Republic — 1971.

The bridge it named is gone. The market that grew underneath it is here, six floors of it.

光華商場 opened in 1973 in the two-level space beneath 光華橋, built to rehouse around two hundred stallholders cleared from 牯嶺街, 遼寧街, 安東街 and 八德路. Accounts split on the month, April in most and October in others, so the year is all this memory will claim.

Second-hand books came first, then antiques and jade from 1979. Through the 1980s electronics took the place over, helped by 臺北工專 — now 臺北科技大學 — sitting on the next block.

The bridge lost its job before it lost its structure. Taipei put the trunk railway underground, and a road bridge built to cross those tracks had nothing left to cross.

After the 1999 earthquake the city's public works engineers found cracks in the main girder and corroded reinforcing bar exposed. Their assessment was that an intensity-five shake would mean closing the bridge on the spot.

Stallholders moved out in mid-January 2006, into temporary sheds at 市民大道 and 金山北路. The bridge came down on the 29th.

Their replacement went up about 120 metres away, on a 5,273 m² plot at 市民大道三段8號 that the Ministry of National Defence had been renting from the city. One basement, six floors, 18,178 m² of floor area.

光華數位新天地 traded on trial from 17 July 2008 and opened formally on the 19th. Floors two and three took the 196 stalls from under the bridge, floors four and five took 180 traders from the 西寧 electronics market, and the sixth was set aside for repair and assembly.

The market's own official history states the model plainly: an electronics quarter along the lines of 秋葉原.

Both of the bridge's name stones were cut free before demolition and kept. One is the slab outside; the other is set into a corridor wall inside 忠孝新生 MRT station, a few hundred metres south.

The old site is a two-minute walk south-east, at 八德路一段 and 新生南路一段, and there is nothing overhead there now.

Photos: the plaza from the terrace of 三創生活園區, 2019, and the salvaged 光華橋 stele, 2015, both by Solomon203, CC BY-SA 4.0; the market under the bridge, 16 July 2005, by Sunoma, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Dates, floor areas and stall counts from the Taipei City Market Administration Office and the city's Public Works Department. Coordinates from the OpenStreetMap building footprint, corroborated by a 2008 Commons photo geotag 10 m away.