Taiwanese Iron Window Grilles: How a Security Grill Wields a Household's Autobiography

30-Second Overview: Iron window grilles appeared in Taiwanese architecture during the Japanese colonial period, were interrupted by metal recycling during wartime, and became widespread in the late 1960s and 1970s alongside residential and steel supply. They served dual functions of theft prevention, lighting, and decoration, while also leaving the owner's profession, faith, and family memories on the street. This article traces the path from the 1958 Taiwan Provincial Parliament's 48-panel grille to the fieldwork records of Old House Face, the preservation of old houses and historical buildings in Lukang, explaining why an unsigned iron piece can become a history of commoner life.

Caption: Window grilles of a residential house in a Beitun alley, Taichung. Author Dquai, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons file page. Image used for street context display, not as evidence for a specific era or owner's story.

In 1958, the windows of the Taiwan Provincial Parliament Building were fitted with 48-panel iron window grilles. Each panel was approximately 136 cm long and 86 cm wide, with no two patterns exactly alike. This was not the standardized security net common today, but a set of iron pieces placing geometric lines, hand-welding, and the imposing atmosphere of political architecture on the same wall. ¹

Looking further back, iron window grilles had already appeared in Taiwanese architecture during the Japanese colonial period. After the expansion of war in 1937, the Japanese government issued a metal recycling order; iron windows and railings on residential houses were dismantled to become wartime materials. Iron window grilles were not always on the streets; they once disappeared from life due to war. ¹

Therefore, the iron window grilles familiar to Taiwanese people cannot be概括 (summarized) merely as "decoration on old houses." They are the result of post-war residential needs, industrial supply, household security, and manual craftsmanship growing together. The most counter-intuitive aspect is that they were originally meant to keep people out, but ultimately allowed the owners to display their own stories to passersby.

📝 Curator's Note
Taiwan's iron window grilles are not the last line closing the home, but the first way the home spoke itself to the street.

From Wartime Shortage to Street-Level Daily Life

The records of the Legislative Yuan Democratic Governance Park clarify the timeline. In the early post-war period, steel was primarily used for reconstruction and national defense, with civilian use restricted. By the late 1960s, the industry shifted from agriculture to manufacturing; after the establishment of China Steel in 1971, steel supply became more stable, and iron window grilles gradually entered ordinary residences. ¹

This timeline explains why iron window grilles are often viewed as a visual symbol of "post-war Taiwan." The 1950s to 1970s were precisely the period of rapid residential increase, with a large emergence of street shops and apartments. Reports from Taiwan Panorama magazine point out that this was also a time when houses were built quickly, yet patterns remained free and unrestrained. ² The "popularization" here should not be understood as every household using the same pattern, but rather as material supply, residential demand, and ironworker technology gradually making iron windows an affordable, customizable component of the home.

At that time, iron window selection did not end with picking a number from a catalog. The Kaohsiung City Government Urban Development Bureau's Old House Renovation Manual points out that early iron windows were mainly made of black iron, shaped by forging and bending, without fixed standards; geometric arrangements, flowers and plants, and figurative totems could all become compositional materials for craftsmen. ³

This approach made windows on the same street look like relatives, but never like mass-produced commodities. Some wanted flowers, some wanted landscapes, some incorporated professions, faith, or family preferences. When the Taipei Public Library compiled Old House Face and Iron Window Grilles, they specifically noted that landscapes, flowers, music, dance, animals, insects, and religious feng shui could all appear in iron window grilles. ⁴

One Panel, One Owner's Life

Caption: Old house in Lukang. Author Yug, licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons file page. This image is used to illustrate old house facades and living scale, not claiming that every window in the frame is an iron grille as described in this article.

In 2020, Readmoo Reading Frontline interviewed Hsin Yung-sheng and Yang Chao-ching of the Old House Face studio. The two originally just rode motorcycles through alleys in Tainan photographing old houses; as they photographed, they discovered that the patterns on the windows spoke more to the residents' character than the house's exterior walls. Within half a year, they photographed one to two thousand iron window grille photos. ⁵

Their working method resembled fieldwork. They not only photographed the front but also chatted with owners, asking how the patterns came to be and how the houses were built. In Tou-Cheng, Yilan, there is a dragon-and-phoenix iron grille; in Lukang, an owner incorporated memories of traveling to Europe with his daughter into a Triumphal Arch pattern. The iron grille was originally an inorganic iron piece, but the stories only emerged after the owner opened the door and served drinks. ⁵

Hsin Yung-sheng said they "wanted to find the taste of memory." This sentence originally referred to breakfast and old shops, but it holds true for iron window grilles as well. Iron window grilles are not art pieces detached from life; together with terrazzo floors, shrine halls, doorframe heights, and potted plant branches, they constitute a space used by a family every day. ⁵

This also changes how we view old houses. Real estate agents call houses "objects," but owners treat them as containers lived in by a family. The value of the window grille lies not only in its造型 (shape/design), but in the fact that it allows a stranger to know what this household believed in, whom they remembered, and what they wanted to leave in front of those outside the door. ^{4 5}

📝 Curator's Note
The most precious part of an iron window grille is often not how beautifully it was welded, but that it made the owner willing to speak five more minutes about their home.

The Legislative Yuan's 48 Panels: Why Is Each One Different?

The Taiwan Provincial Parliament Building provides a comparative example of a public architecture version. This building was completed in 1958, using large-area iron window grilles on its windows, serving both theft prevention and decorative functions. The front has 30 panels, with 8 on each side, totaling 48 panels, and every panel has a different design. ¹

The data page points out that the window grilles feature shapes resembling Western swords. Local lore offers an interpretation: provincial legislators acted as the voice of the people in the parliament, engaging in verbal battles with officials or other legislators, thus placing the imagery of sword fighting into the window grilles. The original design intent of this explanation is untraceable, so it is more suitable as a local memory of the architecture rather than a definitive conclusion of design history. ¹

This example is important not because it proves every flower has a code. It reminds us that iron window grilles in Taiwan have never existed at only one scale: private residences. They can be a small pane outside a kitchen, or an entire row of architectural vocabulary on the front of a public institution. Function and symbolism have been stuck together from the beginning.

Who Records These Unsigned Works?

The creators of iron window grilles mostly left no names. Craftsmen might have worked only based on an owner's "I want something with flowers" or a hand-drawn sketch; after the house was completed, the work became part of the architecture. Unlike sculptures with exhibition titles or paintings with signatures, usually only those living inside know why it looks that way.

The Old House Face studio, established in 2013, allowed this kind of unsigned streetscape to be organized and shared in large quantities for the first time. The Taipei Public Library records that Hsin Yung-sheng and Yang Chao-ching started by sharing photos online, gradually building a community and publishing books, transforming iron window grilles from "something very ordinary on old houses" into a Taiwanese element worth preserving. ⁴

The National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts' special page records that artist Wu Qian-yi has used iron window grilles as a theme for creation and research since 2015. When iron window grilles are placed into artistic creation, they are no longer just accessories to old houses, but become a medium for re-viewing collective memory. ⁶

In 2026, Tainan's Yuejin Art Museum arranged a lecture based on Yang Chao-ching's "Record of Taiwanese Iron Window Grilles," showing that this topic has moved from personal photography to public discussion by local cultural institutions. ⁷

This transformation carries a certain contradiction. The reason iron window grilles are moving is precisely because they were originally not intended to be seen. When they are organized, published, and exhibited, Taiwan begins to see its own daily life, but must also be careful not to over-package the owner's life stories into consumable retro styles.

Preservation Does Not Mean Turning Every Window Into an Exhibit

The difficulty in preserving old houses usually stems from the house simultaneously needing safety, lighting, ventilation, and new modes of use. Removing old windows and replacing them with aluminum windows is fast and easily meets modern needs. Keeping iron windows requires knowing their structure, degree of rust, fixing methods, and original usage context.

The Hualien County Culture Bureau's historical building data page lists "iron window grilles and white walls" as one of the recognizable features of the Forestry Bureau Dormitory Building. When Pingtung County Government introduced the Victory Star Village Preservation Plan, they also mentioned that 120 historical buildings retained old-style iron window grilles, cement flower bricks, and colored glass windows. These cases illustrate that the focus of preservation is not moving decoration alone into a museum, but keeping it as much as possible within its original house relationships. ^{8 9}

Kaohsiung City's Old House Renovation Manual offers another direction. Old houses can be reused, and iron window grilles can become materials in new spaces, but the premise is understanding the original craftsmanship and proportions, rather than just copying a pattern that looks "very retro." ³

A report from the Department of Journalism at Shih Chien University writes that iron window grilles are being transformed into cultural and creative crafts. This path can give old craftsmanship a new income source, but it may also flatten the originally complex life context into a commodity pattern. What is truly worth preserving includes not only flowers, butterflies, or geometric grids, but also how the craftsmen made them, why the owners chose them, and what kind of life these patterns were once attached to. ¹⁰

📝 Curator's Note
The minimum standard for preserving iron window grilles is that after cleaning, it still does not lose the house it was originally meant to protect, light, and tell stories for.

What We See Today May Be the Last Layer of Iron Paint

Taiwan's urban renewal and old house renovation will continue. Not every iron window is worth leaving intact, nor should every new building imitate post-war patterned windows. A more honest approach is to record first, then judge: photograph the pattern, interview the owner, identify the craftsmanship, confirm the house's era, and finally decide on restoration, reuse, or demolition.

An iron window grille report reprinted on the Ministry of Foreign Affairs NGO Bilingual Website mentions that a Lukang owner incorporated the local landmark Shiyi Building and Half-Moon Well into the window grille. This example allows us to see that window grilles are not merely decorative frames, but a way residents shrink the local map to their doorstep. ¹¹

Caption: 19th-century old houses in Anping, Tainan. Author CEphoto, Uwe Aranas, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0. Author and licensing information from Wikimedia Commons file page retained. This image is a schematic of historical street shop context, not used to infer the era of the iron window grilles.

If we only view iron window grilles as security equipment, we will miss their second function. If we only view them as retro aesthetics, we will forget they once responded to real security anxieties, material shortages, and household needs. They are simultaneously protection and display. They keep the outside world out a bit, and reveal the life inside a bit.

Three Things to Distinguish When Looking at Images

First, images can help readers distinguish the scale of iron windows, window doors, and old house facades, but cannot alone prove the era of a certain pattern. Second, the author and licensing information on the Commons file page, and the historical source of Taiwan's iron window grilles, are two different chains of evidence. The former answers "can this photo be used," while the latter answers "how this window was formed." Third, the appearance of window grilles in old house photos does not mean the owner's story can be self-written by the viewer. What can be confirmed should be based on the file page and article sources. What cannot be confirmed should be retained as a visual impression, not writing speculation as historical fact.

This distinction seems conservative, but it is the most basic respect when preserving commoner architecture. Iron window grilles are rarely signed; once photos detach from original descriptions, they are easily re-stuck with incorrect locations, eras, or owner identities. Images are therefore not decoration for the article, but historical entry points that need to be verified together.

Next time you walk through the alleys of Taiwan, you can refrain from rushing to find a pretty old house. First, look at the windows. See if it has an asymmetrical corner, a pattern resembling a travel souvenir, a flower covered by a potted plant, or a section of faded black paint. There may be no author's name, but someone once gestured in front of a craftsman, someone once installed it for safety, and someone placed the thing they most wanted to leave outside the window.

Further Reading

If you want to place iron window grilles back into a larger architectural context, you can continue reading 台灣建築(/en/art/taiwanese-architecture/), then compare how historical districts, terrazzo, and old house reuse jointly preserve residential memory.

References