looks at the past and future of Shanghai Peace Hotel

The Peace Hotel is about to close for renovations. Indeed, the city is abuzz with talk about what the future holds for these landmark buildings, though no one doubts that great, and much needed, changes will be made. But that’s nothing new. Since its construction, it has been remodelled several times. In fact, the Peace Hotel’s southern wing was originally built as the Palace Hotel, and its northern wing as Sassoon House, incorporating the legendary Cathay Hotel.

When I took my first steps on the Bund in 1986, I had more than a passing interest in the Peace Hotel, as I was in China to research the development of its tourism industry. Despite its rather worn appearance and demeanour, I fell in love with the hotel at first sight and was filled with a determination to find out more about its illustrious past.

The story began when Shanghai’s first hostelry on the Bund, the Victoria Hotel, on the site of the south building of the Peace Hotel, was opened in 1850. It was renamed as the Commercial Hotel in 1854 and the Central Hotel, which boasted the finest billiard tables and tastiest European kitchen in town, took its place in 1875.

Edward Ezra, a representative of one of the three great Sephardic Jewish families that were to dominate the hotel scene in Shanghai, took control of the hotel in 1896. He commissioned architects Scott & Carter to draw up plans for replacing it with the much larger and modern Palace Hotel in 1904, and building work started later that year. The work was to be undertaken in two stages, with completion dates of 1906 and 1908. The project, however, was blighted with construction problems from its outset and the western section of the hotel, which was due to be completed in October 1906, wasn’t actually opened until April 1907.

As soon as the first section was completed, the old Central Hotel was pulled down and work on building the front part of the hotel facing the Bund began in August 1907. Again, building work was slower than expected and was further delayed by a fire on the roof in December that year. Despite the surviving 1906 inscription over the main entrance, and premature celebrations for its 100th anniversary in 2006, the whole building wasn’t fully completed until October 1909.

That the building still stands to this day is somewhat of a miracle. The hotel was the most commodious ever built in China, it was plagued with construction and management problems from the start. It was considered as something of a house that-Jack-built as walls, windows and doors were pulled askew as it sank into the soft earth below. Yet another fire, in August 1912, destroyed the hotel’s signature roof towers (they were only recreated in 1998) and complaints over exorbitant pricing, poor management and mediocre food were rife.

Things began to turn around after Ezra established The Shanghai Hotels Ltd. in 1917 and really picked up in 1923, after the company merged with The Hongkong Hotel Company, an institution synonymous with the Kadoorie family. The Palace Hotel was one of the first properties in China to come under the umbrella of what is now the Peninsula Group.

Plans to demolish the hotel and to replace it with a modern structure at an “indefinite future date” were drawn up in 1923. However, in the interim, the company embarked upon a major remodelling of the property employing the services of Palmer and Turner. George Leopold Wilson, the company’s doyen architect, who had a hand in no fewer than nine buildings on the Bund, commented that the Palace Hotel “was never a thing of beauty, it is to be hoped that it will soon give way to something better”.

The ground floor was rid of its shops and the highly successful Palace Hotel Tea Lounge, to the west of the lobby, was opened in 1925. The lounge, with its 18th- century style décor, which has survived to the present-day, simply became known as ‘Shanghai’s rendezvous’. It was partnered, in 1927, by an Italian style grill-room, with an orchestra shell between the two allowing after-dinner dances in the tea lounge.

Despite the modernization, the opening of the ultra-modern Cathay Hotel in 1929 cast a solemn shadow over the future of its ageing southern neighbour. If it wasn’t for the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War in 1937 the hotel would have been demolished and rebuilt in 1939. Instead, The Hongkong and Shanghai Hotels Ltd. had to content themselves with a full renovation of its guest rooms. Further renovations took place after the Japanese vacated the hotel in 1945.

While the Palace Hotel building has enjoyed a providential and protracted stay of execution, the birth of the Cathay Hotel was a completely unplanned conception.

The original plans for the building of Sassoon House, drawn up by George Leopold Wilson, made no provision for a hotel. Construction of what was to be Asia’s most modern office building, incorporating shopping arcades and 20 luxury apartments, that began in spring of 1926, was halted in 1928 when four floors had already been completed. Sir Victor Sassoon, who had just established Cathay Hotels, Ltd., wished to convert the upper part of the building into a luxury hotel and two extra floors were added to the design.