East Asiatic Building
historic building in Bangkok
The East Asiatic Building is a historic building in Bangkok's Bang Rak District. It sits on the eastern bank of the Chao Phraya River, opposite the Oriental Hotel on Soi Charoen Krung 40 and adjacent to the Catholic Mission and Assumption Cathedral. The building was built c. 1900 in Renaissance Revival style to designs by Annibale Rigotti, and served as the headquarters of the East Asiatic Company (Thailand) until 1995, receiving the ASA Architectural Conservation Award in 1984. In 2023, Asset World Corporation announced plans to renovate the building into a hotel under the Plaza Athénée brand, in partnership with Nobu Hospitality.
Site
The East Asiatic Building is located at the end of Soi Charoen Krung 40, facing the Chao Phraya River, in Bang Rak district in Bangkok. The building sits next to the Mandarin Oriental Hotel, on opposite sides of the soi. The Mandarin Oriental, originally the Oriental, was formerly owned by Andersen & Co., established by Hans Niels Andersen and Andreas du Plessis de Richelieu, which later become the East Asiatic Company (EAC). The building has direct access to the river via the Oriental pier.
Architecture
Sources credit the building's design to Italian architect Annibale Rigotti.
“East Asiatic Building” enters the record as historic building in Bangkok. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what East, Asiatic and Building can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“East Asiatic Building” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, East, Asiatic and Building provides the most credible route into that argument.
Place names and jurisdictional language are key evidence: both can reveal earlier catalogue descriptions and overlooked record series. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 16, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q59258626. Authority coordinates are 13.723, 100.514. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1900, 1995, 1984 and 2023.
Modern boundaries and familiar names can conceal earlier jurisdictions or structures that do not align with the present site. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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Treat names, boundaries and functions as historically changeable. Maps, plans, inventories and administrative records can clarify what the place meant at different dates.
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This entry incorporates text from “East Asiatic Building” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.