Originally built for senior officials who visited the experimental farm, Changchun Hall (鬯春堂) was also completed in early 1908, together with Changguan Building. Song Jiaoren (宋教仁), a republican revolutionary and one of the founders of the Kuomintang, lived here for nine months in 1912 during his tenure as the first Minister of Agriculture and Forestry of ROC. He led the Kuomintang to an electoral victory in China's first democratic election in February 1913, only to be assassinated in March. It was once planned in early 1930s to redevelop the farm site as National Beiping Natural History Museum, a Jardin des Plantes style combination of museum, gardens and zoo, and Changchun Hall was used as the meeting place for its board of directors. The museum plan never came to fruition and the zoo expanded to the whole site after 1949.
