Xinmin Street After the Ministries

Xinmin Street’s former State Council building was built from 1933 to 1936 as the central administration of Manchukuo. Jilin University describes its five-storey central block and lower wings as a shan-shaped composition, with a towered roof and dark glazed tiles. The form made the government visible from the avenue. It was a state building serving an occupation regime, so the façade’s institutional weight came from its political function, not just its scale.

Jilin University identifies the former State Council building with its basic-medicine teaching work. The shift from central administration to medical education changed the building’s use without removing it from institutional life. It remains a working university place rather than a stand-alone monument with every room open to visitors. Along Xinmin Street, medical and educational functions sit beside the avenue’s historical architecture.

A 2025 renewal project removed some compound walls and connected planted institutional courtyards to public space. Jilin’s official report counts thirteen pocket parks in that project and notes that a mature elm was protected while utilities were rerouted around existing greenery. A CCTV report adds the street-level details: the slow-walking path was widened, ramps eased access and solar charging seats gave people a place to pause. The changes depend on practical design: tree roots, buried services, walking routes and institutional boundaries had to be considered together.

The renewed street also includes public-service details: wayfinding signs, accessible approaches and emergency supplies at participating shops, according to CCTV’s 2025 report. The report says 29 specialty shops reopened along the renewed avenue, adding small commercial uses beside hospital, university and government activity. Jilin’s account describes warm-white lights along the architecture and a shaded waiting area near Jilin University’s First Hospital. These facilities support different uses of the same street: people move between institutions, while planting and seating turn some edges into places to stop.

The former Changchun Daily offices were adapted as the Changchun History and Culture Museum. This added a public-history interior to a street that still carries medical and educational work. The 2025 government reports place the museum alongside the renewed shared spaces and surviving institutional buildings. Xinmin Street’s present is therefore made from several kinds of use at once: work inside old buildings, movement along a busy avenue and a new place where the city can explain its own history.