Spy the best art deco landmarks on a walking tour

Text Gary Jones

In Pudong, acRoss the Huangpu River from Shanghai’s historic Bund, the cloud-busting World Financial Center is, at 492 metres, one of the world’s tallest buildings. It looms alongside the rocket-like Oriental Pearl TV Tower and the space-age Shanghai Stock Exchange. The three are potent symbols of a city reclaiming its reputation as a commerce-driven powerhouse.

In the 1930s, in its heyday as a Chinese city run by colonial powers, Shanghai was a melting pot of peoples and ideas from every corner of the planet. It was an exciting time of pink gins and jazz, and local architects embraced the cutting edge of contemporary design to reflect the toe-tapping zeitgeist. Shanghai fell head over its high heels for art deco.

Inspired by the Italian Futurist and German Bauhaus schools, deco emphasised uncluttered geometric forms and simplified lines, and was generously applied in Shanghai to everything from hotels and fire hydrants to cinemas and saltshakers. Shanghai, in 2010, still boasts more deco structures than Miami, the Florida city lauded as a living museum to that 20th-century design movement.

One of the best architectural examples in Shanghai, and the ideal starting point for a deco walking tour of the city, is Broadway Mansions, a Gotham-esque structure with a commanding location to the north of the Bund. Constructed as an apartment building in 1934, the 22-storey ochre-brick structure is now dwarfed by twinkling skyscrapers, and yet still exudes a here-to-stay confidence.

Three years after completion Broadway’s high-living tenants were kicked out by the invading Japanese army, and its glamorous Big Apple-inspired moniker would be changed to Shanghai Mansions come the 1949 victory of Mao Zedong’s communists. The building has since reclaimed its old name and houses a four-star hotel, and paying guests are once more permitted entry.

Shanghai’s most discussed art deco masterpiece is a short stroll south. The Peace Hotel (originally christened the Cathay Hotel in 1929) was the vanity project of old Shanghai’s most prominent businessman, Victor Sassoon, a British citizen of Iraqi origin whose family had made its fortune in opium. The fashionable Cathay regularly accommodated celebrities, including Charlie Chaplin and Noel Coward.

Standing a modest 77 metres, the Peace screams old-world grandeur. Interestingly, the Bank of China that sits at the Peace’s elbow was intended to be the tallest building on the Bund. But back then the Bund was a British-administered area of the city, and Sassoon objected strenuously. The bank’s plans were then altered to incorporate a pagoda-style roof atop a design that eventually rose just 30 centimetres short of Sassoon’s showpiece.

Heading west, away from the river along Nanjing Road, Shanghai’s most bustling shopping drag, you will soon reach People’s Square, where the dark-red-brick Park Hotel, which threw open its etched-glass doors in 1934, stands out like a sore thumb. Boasting a retracting ballroom roof, the Park attracted Shanghai’s glitterati to dance under the stars. With 22 floors, the hotel boasted grand views of Shanghai Racecourse, and was the tallest building between London and Tokyo until well after the end of the Second World War.

Deco apartment buildings will also win your attention as you head further west. The minimalist Medhurst, built in 1934, stands at the corner of Shimen Road, and would have been considered the height of chic living in its day. More deco buildings line the side streets off Nanjing Road, including the DV Woo House (Tongren Road). The four-floor house was designed by innovative Hungarian architect Ladislaus Hudec in 1938 and featured all mod cons, including an elevator, air conditioning and a bar opening onto the garden.

Nearby Eddington House (Changde Road), has survived decades of neglect. This was the home of Zhang Ailing (Eileen Chang), China’s most celebrated female writer of the 20th century. Zhang and her neighbours would have visited the nearby Paramount Ballroom (Wanhangdu Road) to let their hair down. As well as state-of-the-art dancehalls, Shanghailanders were spoilt for choice when it came to after-dark entertainment. At deco cinemas they would have lapped up blockbusters from the golden age of Hollywood. By 1939, Columbia, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Paramount, 20th Century Fox, United Artists, Universal Studios and Warner Bros. all had offices in Shanghai.

The Cathay Cinema sits at the hectic junction of Huaihai and Maoming roads in Shanghai’s Former French Concession south from Nanjing. This area of the city is awash with deco influences, and further south along Maoming huddles Cathay Mansions, one of the first deco high-rises to be built on Shanghai’s swampy soil. The Cathay was such a success that its owners built Grosvenor House – an even larger deco building nearby. These days, the Jinjiang Hotel complex has swallowed both up, with the Grosvenor’s 72 suites attracting a new breed of VIP.

Stroll the old French Concession and you are guaranteed to stumble upon countless examples of Shanghai’s rich deco heritage. Hidden away on its winding avenues are the Dufour, Foncim, and futuristic Elizabeth apartments. As Shanghai races towards a bright future, and its steel-and-glass skyscrapers stretch towards the heavens, its art deco masterpieces of the 1930s are concrete testaments to Shanghai’s clout of yesteryear.

Where to Stay

Housed in some of Shanghai’s most desirable heritage-designated architecture, art deco hotels are not the cheapest in China’s most sophisticated metropolis. The World Expo, which will be held in Shanghai from May 1 to October 31, and which is expected to attract 70 million visitors, will also likely encourage rates upward this year. Great deals can sometimes be found, however, when booking online.

The legendary Peace Hotel has been under top-to-toe renovation for over a year, and is set to reopen as the Fairmont Peace Hotel sometime in mid-2010. For more information, see www.fairmont.com/promo/peacehotel (rates available upon application). The five-star Langham Yangtze Boutique Shanghai boasts many rooms with balconies and a prime downtown location close to People’s Square and within walking distance of the Bund (yangtzeboutique.langhamhotels.com; tel: +8621 6080 0800). The Jinjiang Hotel, also five-star, in the former French Concession (jinjianghotels.com; tel: +8621 3218 9888) is one of the more affordable art deco options in town, and located close to much of the city’s best shopping, dining and nightlife.