Park Hotel (), historically the Shanghai Joint Savings Society Building, is an

Art Deco Art Deco, short for the French ''Arts Décoratifs'', and sometimes just called Deco, is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design, that first appeared in France in the 1910s (just before World War I), and flourished in the Unite ...

hotel on Nanjing Road West,

Shanghai Shanghai (; , , Standard Mandarin pronunciation: ) is one of the four direct-administered municipalities of the People's Republic of China (PRC). The city is located on the southern estuary of the Yangtze River, with the Huangpu River flowin ...

, China. It was the tallest building in Asia from its completion in 1934 to 1963.

History

The Shanghai Joint Savings Society Building, located at No.170 Nanjing Road West, was named after the Joint Savings Society, founded in 1923 by the merger of Yienyieh Commercial Bank, Kincheng Banking corporation, the China and South Sea Bank, and the Continental Bank. It was built as a competitor for the

Cathay Hotel The Peace Hotel () is a hotel on The Bund in Shanghai, China, which overlooks the surrounding areas. The hotel has two different buildings. The Sassoon House, originally housed the Cathay Hotel and is today the Fairmont Peace Hotel run by Fairm ...

. The building was designed by the Hungarian-Slovakian architect

László Hudec László Ede Hudec or Ladislav Hudec ( hu, Hugyecz László Ede) (Besztercebánya, Austria-Hungary (now Banská Bystrica, Slovakia) January 8, 1893 – Berkeley, October 26, 1958), Chinese name Wu Dake (), was a Hungarian– Slovak architect acti ...

in March 1931 and construction was completed in December 1934. The building is 83.8 metres tall and contains 22 stories above ground and another 2 stories underground. Built by Voh Kee Construction Company, the piling project was finished by a Danish Company established by Corrit. Strongly inspired by the

American Radiator Building The American Radiator Building (also known as the American Standard Building) is an early skyscraper at 40 West 40th Street, just south of Bryant Park, in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City. It was designed by Raymond Hood an ...

, it is among the well known building from Hudec in Shanghai. It remained the tallest building in China until 1966, and in Shanghai until 1983. On February 23, 1938, G.H. Thomas wrote: "I stayed at the Park Hotel on Bubbling Well Road, where I had a great room and bath. The appointments, the bath and the service are just like in any first-class hotel in New York. A single room such as mine costs $8 a day without food." It was built overlooking the horse racing course owned by The Shanghai Race Club, one of the most prestigious locations in Shanghai at the time. The Shanghai Race Course and the Shanghai Recreation Ground that it enclosed was later turned into the People's Park by the Shanghai Government. Originally the Park Hotel accommodated the Joint Savings Society Bank in its lower two floors, and the hotel on the upper floors.Warr, Anne: ''Shanghai Architecture'', The Watermark Press, 2007,

Exterior

The first three floors are finished with polished black granite from Shandong Province. The upper floors are clad with dark brown brick and ceramic face tiles. The exterior has had two major changes: there is a banking entrance on one corner, and a marquee was added that masks the unique

silhouette A silhouette ( , ) is the image of a person, animal, object or scene represented as a solid shape of a single colour, usually black, with its edges matching the outline of the subject. The interior of a silhouette is featureless, and the silhou ...

of the top floors.

Interior

In 1935, the outdoor garden on the 13th floor was converted into the 14th floor banquet space and surrounded by windows and covered with a retractable roof. That roof is now a back-lit glass panel set into a ceiling. Most of the interior was deliberately changed by the Chinese government in the 1950s because they disliked the existing bourgeois style. The building was renovated again in the 1980s to partially refurbish into the original style. In 1997, American designer George Grigorian remodeled some the interior using an Art Deco style. American architect Christopher Choa restored the Art Deco lobby in 2001.

References

External links

Park Hotel official website

Official website

Interactive 3D model of Park Hotel Shanghai
created with Virtual Building Explorer. {{Coord, 31, 14, 01.2, N, 121, 28, 17.7, E, region:CN-31_type:landmark, display=title, name=Park Hotel Shanghai László Hudec buildings 1934 establishments in China Art Deco architecture in Shanghai Hotel buildings completed in 1934 Hotels established in 1934 Hotels in Shanghai Huangpu District, Shanghai Major National Historical and Cultural Sites in Shanghai