Hōheikan

Hōheikan, Sapporo's preserved Old Public Hall, is best known for two interior rooms restored in the 1980s. The ground-floor Large Dining Room has served many functions since the hall opened: banquets, painting exhibitions, lectures, and in the years after World War II, even a hospital ward and office space. The current furniture arrangement recreates the room's original banquet configuration. Two large display cabinets with mirrored surfaces, documented in newspaper photos from the building's opening, remain in the room. The carved wooden ceiling sets it apart from the plaster ceilings found throughout most of the building, and a fireplace with a pomegranate-tile surround and artificial stone mantelpiece runs along one wall. Upstairs, the Imperial Dining Room was originally an undesignated spare room until it served as a dining space during the Crown Prince's visit in 1911. Research during the 1980s renovation confirmed that its original wallpaper was unusually expensive, and a similar reproduction was selected to approximate the look after the original was lost. The curtain boxes here are plainer than those in the ground-floor VIP and Large Dining Rooms, each room distinguished by different holdback decorations. The lighting fixtures hanging in the room are the original installations from the hall's construction, identified and restored during the same 1980s renovation work.