The name of this compound, too, is relatively new. As Tianchunyuan, the Garden of Heavenly Spring, it was the home of Tian Wan, father of Ming Emperor Chongzhen¡¯s favorite concubine; under Kangxi, it was home to marquis Zhang Yong, who helped suppress any number of anti-Qing rebellions; and in the Daoguang period it was renovated by Zhu Xi, who named it Zengjiuyuan, the Garden of Increasing Antiquity. Most of the current buildings were built in 1906 by Second-to-last Emperor Guangxu. The Northern Warlord government's Ministries of the Army and Navy were located here, and Yuan Shikai walked the grounds briefly before moving to Zhongnanhai. Sun Yat-sen died here in 1925, and during the occupation of Beijing, the Japanese army used these buildings as its center of operations.

Given all this, it is remarkable that Duan Qirui landed contemporary naming rights: he led the country for less than two years. In fact, it's remarkable that he ever got here at all. In 1917, Li Yuanhong fired him from his post as prime minister for soliciting secret loans from the Japanese. But Duan quickly found his footing, and undermined Zhang Xun's attempt to put Puyi back on the throne. Duan then managed to provoke the May Fourth Movement by promising to give German concessions in Shandong to Japan. Forced out again in 1920 by a gaggle of warlords led by Cao Kun, Duan staged another comeback in 1923, leading the effort to prevent Cao from assuming the presidency. By November of 1924, triangulating carefully between Zhang Zuolin and Feng Yuxiang, Duan landed himself in the driver's seat, and worked those two men against each other right up to the moment that ended his warlord/political career and tied the compound to his name. On March 18, 1926, he unleashed his troops on the students outside the gate who were protesting against, among other things, his tendency to solve problems by trading Chinese honor and land for Japanese weapons and cash. Forty two students were killed. Then Feng overthrew Duan, Zhang overthrew Feng, and Duan disappeared from the picture.

All that is long past, but the brick facades here are still extraordinary: sharp Western turn-of-the-century ornate, with splendid balconies and an imposing clock tower, though even on a clear day the architecture feels dark, in places verging on gothic. This is in part because the largest and most impressive buildings are empty, or nearly so, and have been for some time. They are protected by both municipal and federal edicts, but no one can quite decide what to do with them.

Deeper within the compound, there is renovation going on. These buildings house, among other things, the editorial offices of the People's University Press, and several sections of the China Academy of Social Sciences, including the Gulf and Russian Research Centers, the Center for South African Studies, and the Institute of Japanese Studies. Still farther in is what was once a state guesthouse. Signs everywhere warn of the risks of fire and other manifestations of carelessness: my two favorites are "Fire disaster is more dangerous than a ferocious tiger" and "Duty is even weightier than Mount Tai."

"Duty" and "fire" have since been used in other contexts; the stone lions out front stand only slightly farther north than their metallic ancestors. And as for what is to come? The primary options under consideration include a Museum of the Republic, and in so many ways this seems appropriate, the future looping back to the past once again.