Charles Henry Gonda (22 June 1889 – 1 April 1969), professionally known as C. H. Gonda, was a Hungarian architect famous for his ultra-modern style of building. He was active in Shanghai throughout the 1920s–1940s and began working on his first project, the Messrs, Lane, Crawford & Co's New Frontage building, in 1922 after leaving his previous firm Probst, Hanbury & Co.. Among his largest extant works are the Capitol Theatre (光陆大戏院), Sun Sun Department Store (新新公司), Cathay Theatre (国泰电影院), the Bank of East Asia (东亚银行) and the Bank of Communications (交通银行). Biography Early life C. H. Gonda was born in Gyöngyös, Austro-Hungary as Károly Goldstein, the younger son in a family of the Jewish merchant Henrik Goldstein and the housewife Róza Balkányi. In 1902, the Goldsteins changed their surname to Gonda to make it sound more Hungarian. Following the death of Henrik, the family moved to Vienna, where Károly finished his secondary education and his older brother Aurel started working as a doctor. In 1908, Károly Gonda enrolled at the Technical College of Vienna's School of Architecture but dropped out during the summer semester of 1914. He made his way to Paris, where he likely received a diploma from the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and later apprenticed in London for about a year. When the First World War broke out, both Károly and Aurel were drafted. Károly served in the 309th regiment of the national guard infantry, for which in 1917 he was awarded a silver medal for valor, second class. He was captured by the Russians and assigned to a prisoner's war camp near Nikolsk-Ussuriysk. While in captivity, he met Evdokia, the daughter of the well-known architect N.V. Dmitriev, who had moved from Moscow to Vladivostok to escape the tumult of the Russian revolution. As Gonda spoke Hungarian, German, English, French, and Russian, Evdokia hired him as the language teacher for her two sons from the previous marriage, George and Vladimir. Károly and Evdokia married in January 1919, and Gonda adopted Evdokia's sons. Life in Shanghai As Russia was getting entrenched in the civil war, the couple left the country and went to China, arriving in Shanghai on September 15, 1920; the children followed soon after. Gonda found employment at the Property and Estate Department of the British firm Probst, Hanbury & Co., and the family settled on Dixwell Road (now Liyang Lu 溧阳路). Having soon attained a promotion,