Former Taiwan Provincial Administrative Executive Office (now Executive Yuan)

The Central Building of the Executive Yuan, located in Zhongzheng District, Taipei, is one of the most historically significant government buildings in Taiwan. Long attributed to Ide Kaoru (井手薰), chief architect of the Office of the Governor-General of Taiwan's construction department, though more recent research credits the design to the commissioned architect Shinohara Ryō (篠原良), the building was constructed between 1937 and 1940 (entering use in 1941) as the new Taipei Municipal Office (台北市役所). Its distinctive floor plan in the shape of the character 日, with offices along four sides and an assembly hall at the center, covered about 1,122 tsubo (roughly 3,700 square meters) on the ground floor and somewhat less on the upper floors, making it one of the few large government structures built during the late Japanese colonial period. The building was constructed by the Hsieh-Chih Association (協志商會), a Taiwanese firm that would later become the Tatung Company.

Following Japan's surrender on August 15, 1945, the building was requisitioned to serve as the headquarters of the Taiwan Provincial Administrative Executive Office (台灣省行政長官公署), established on September 1, 1945 under Chief Administrator Chen Yi (陳儀). This office wielded extraordinary power, consolidating executive, legislative, judicial, and military authority — a governance structure that many Taiwanese found oppressive and reminiscent of the colonial regime it replaced. Mismanagement, corruption, economic deterioration, and cultural conflicts between the incoming mainland Chinese administrators and the local Taiwanese population created deepening resentment.

On February 28, 1947, following a confrontation the previous day between tobacco monopoly enforcement agents and a Taiwanese widow in the Dadaocheng area, public outrage boiled over. Thousands of protesters marched from Dadaocheng toward the Administrative Executive Office to demand justice. As they approached the building, guards opened fire with machine guns, killing and wounding multiple demonstrators. This act of violence at the seat of government power became the catalyst for the island-wide February 28 Incident (二二八事件), one of the most traumatic events in modern Taiwanese history, leading to weeks of civil unrest followed by brutal military suppression that claimed thousands of lives.

In the aftermath, the Administrative Executive Office was abolished on May 16, 1947 and reorganized as the Taiwan Provincial Government (台灣省政府), which occupied the building until relocating to Zhongxing New Village in Nantou County in 1957. The Executive Yuan, the highest administrative organ of the Republic of China, has occupied the building since then.

On July 30, 1998, the Ministry of the Interior designated the Central Building of the Executive Yuan as a national historic site (國定古蹟). Today the building continues to function as the seat of the Executive Yuan, serving as a living monument to Taiwan's complex twentieth-century history — from Japanese colonial governance, through the trauma of the postwar transition and the 228 Incident, to its present role in democratic governance.