The former Ward Road Gaol, built in 1903 and now known as Tilanqiao Prison, is the largest prison in Asia and one of the most significant surviving examples of the International Settlement's institutional architecture. The six-storey radial cell block, built on the Pentonville model with a central surveillance hub and radiating wings, held political prisoners, criminals, and Japanese prisoner-of-war detainees through successive regimes.
The prison is operating and not open to the public in its interior; the exterior walls and gate buildings are visible from Ward Road and give a sense of the institutional scale. The surrounding neighbourhood of Tilanqiao is one of the few areas in Hongkou that has preserved a continuous commercial street environment from the 1930s and 1940s.