กลุ่มตึกแถวหัวมุมถนนอัษฎางค์และซอยพระยาศรี

These four shophouse rows were built during the late reign of King Rama V, around the 1890s–1900s, as part of a systematic crown-led urban modernization initiative that extended along Fueang Nakhon, Charoen Krung, and Atsadang roads. The Crown Property (Privy Purse) developed the rows as planned commercial real estate, intended to generate rental income while modernizing Bangkok’s streetscapes.

The four rows sit across two street corners rather than one continuous block. The first runs south along Atsadang Road from its corner with Soi Phraya Si. The second starts at that same corner and runs east along Soi Phraya Si, ending in its own corner unit at Fueang Nakhon Road. The third sits directly opposite, on the southeast corner of that same Fueang Nakhon Road / Soi Phraya Si intersection, wrapping around both streets. The fourth stands a little further along Soi Phraya Si, past that corner.

Stylistically, the group belongs to Bangkok’s High Sino-Colonial & Eclectic Stucco period (see the Shophouse Styles guide) — full European classical ornament applied to the shophouse form, concentrated on each row’s corner unit.

All three rows’ corner units — plus the second row’s other end, facing it across the Fueang Nakhon Road intersection — carry the same triangular pediment above the upper-floor corner window. The rows themselves diverge, though: the second row keeps that triangle motif on every window down its length, the first row switches to plain round arches, and the third row drops to plain square-topped windows with no arch or pediment at all. Since every corner matches while each row goes its own way, it looks like the corners were built (or retained) together, and each row was redeveloped separately, on its own timeline.

The fourth row has no corner unit of its own, sitting entirely within Soi Phraya Si, and continues the third row’s plain, square-windowed style.

Like most Bangkok shophouses of the period, each unit follows a dual-purpose layout: an open ground floor for retail or wholesale trade, with private residential quarters above. Continuous wooden louvred shutters and transom grilles allow airflow through the building while keeping out direct sun and monsoon rain, and shared masonry party walls between units double as both fire barriers and acoustic insulation between merchant families.