SHANGHAI CABARET ARCHITECTURE

The History of art, fashion and architecture in Shanghai at the beginning of the X Century is the story of luxury, sophistication, ballrooms and the world of cabaret.  The East coast of China and especially Shanghai were the dreamland for people from all over the world in the search for prosperity and a better life.

These years were associated with the term Shanghai Style or Haipai (æµ·æ´¾,), which remarks the importance and the role of the city in this new period when East met the West. This term was initially a way Beijing writers have to criticize the excesses and the westernisation of Shanghai during the second and third decades of the XX Century. Nowadays this is seen as the symbol of diversity and inclusiveness, a special style that boasts both orientalism and western culture. After 1949, Shanghai has become the cultural and artistic center in the eastern coastal area in China.

 Shanghai Hai Pai Culture - Source Culture Trip

SHANGHAI STYLE AND PROSPERITY

It is really difficult to imagine Shanghai in the year 1842 as a small fishing village in the Yangzi River delta and compare it with the emerging city that turned to be 70 years after the end of the Opium Wars. It was at this point when the city port was opened and, with it, the new city was born. At that time numerous foreigners from Europe, America, Japan, India moved to this new land of opportunities and changed the culture of Shanghai in a lot of ways. The buildings on the Bund were the witness and the evidence of this huge and quick change. And that was the beginning of Hai Pai culture, the combination of Chinese and Western cultures, gradually formed.

 Shanghai Port 1860 - Source Le Tour du Monde

As the traditional biggest port of China and contact point with Western influences, Shanghai managed to become also the biggest industry metropolis in China at the beginning of the XX Century. The city not only became the core of business, but also in terms of artistic cooperation, creating a literary tradition, towards the end of the Qing dynasty and writers at that moment converged to Shanghai. At this time, cooperation becomes established between Chinese authors and religious foreigners.

Old China - Source the Criminal Element

During this period, Haipai culture developed rapidly partly because of the western influence and the quick modernization.  Money started to flow, THE economy prospered and the population grew, giving the metropolis the character and vitality that has today.

Shanghai concession was the biggest one in China at that time and it exerted a profound influence in the settlement of western influences in all life aspects that include art and architecture. This supposed the landing in China of the Western styles, mainly represented by Art Deco.

 Shanghai Bund - Source Signify

The city landscape became full of brand new corporative buildings that followed the Art Deco designs and villas that replicated the colonial-style architecture. Between the city districts, the most well-known foreign concession in Shanghai was the French Concession that retains much of the architecture of those times.

 Shanghai Peace Hotel - Source Pinterest

 BALLROOMS AND PROSPERITY

If there is a symbol of these lively times is the dance floor and the proliferation of spaces for leisure and enjoyment. Shanghai became the stage of a newly Asian revival of Belle époque that attracted a new empowered business class of influential businessmen and artists.  Shanghai was by that time (the 1920s and 1930s)  the world’s fifth-most populous city and by far the most modern metropolis in Asia, crowded by jazz clubs, fast cars, machine guns, neon lights, taxi dancers, plush cinemas, massive casinos.

 Shanghai Jazz Band - Source Shanghai Sojourns

 As a consequence of the new social class ambitions and demands, by the end of the 1920s, the city counted with a total of seven ballrooms that increased with the arrival of jazz to the city and the need of the elites to go dancing with more regularity.

These spaces were designed by the moment leading architects and were the perfect socializing venue for the new city elites and aristocrats and a perfect place to celebrate their status. Among the space itself, the new spaces also included dance floors, sophisticated lighting systems, and some other technical features to reinforce the entertainment experience.

Most of these ballrooms are still existing today and keeping most of their original features, but changing the main use of the dance floor to some other new activities suitable with the glamour of the space, such as wedding banquets, conferences, and even the stock exchange.

First ballrooms:

In previous articles we studied some of these spaces. One of the earliest Ballrooms in the city was the Astor House Ballroom, designed by the Spanish architect Abelardo Lafuente Rojo and located in one of Shanghai’s earliest international hostels.

Astor House Hotel Ballroom - Source Travelage West

The same hotel management running the Astor House promoted a new ballroom designed by the same architect. Located on the corner of Gordon Road and Bubbling Well Road (now Nanjing West Road), the new Majestic Hotel held an opulent dancing ballroom for 800 guests.

The Majestic Hotel ballroom became the preference site venue for Shanghai’s elites, eclipsing the Astor House in popularity in the late 1920s and becoming the place of Chiang Kai-Shek and  Soong Mei-ling on December 1, 1927.

French Club Ballroom (Garden Hotel):

At around the same time as the transformation of the Majestic Hotel, a French architect named Paul Veysseyre designed a new building for the French Club that would replace the existing one located on Nanchang Road, a place where today the Shanghai Science Hall is located. The new club would be located in the corner of Maoming Road and Huaihai Road.

 Circle Sportif Fran?ais Ballroom - Source Pinterest

Opened in 1926 as an only membership club, the architects chose a classic style for the exterior of the building and the new Art Deco style for the interior spaces.

The centerpiece of the new French Club was its ballroom with a spacious dance floor made of polished wood and surrounded by guest tables

The whole space was flanked at the bottom by an orchestra and adorned by a stained-glass ceiling light decoration element.

Today, all these features can be visited and used as part of the Garden Hotel spaces.

 Okura Garden Hotel Ballroom - Source Garden Hotel Shanghai

Cathay Hotel Ballroom (Peace Hotel):

In the middle of a Ballroom and dance floor boom, in the year 1926, a new hotel located at the corner of Nanjing East Road and the Bund opened the spaces to the public. Initially named Cathay Hotel and later known as Peace Hotel from 1950, this hotel was a symbol of wealth, luxury, exclusivity and Art Deco architecture.

The building was designed by George Leopold Wilson, inspired by the Manhattan modernist buildings. The hotel design included on the 8th floor a luxury ballroom for dancing, dining and drinking. It also included doors opening to the balcony that offered the best views of the Bund.

Peace Hotel Ballroom - Source Fairmont Hotel

The dance floor was made in maple and was flanked by lavishing decorations with a constant presence of glass elements.

The hotel ballroom was renovated and enlarged in 1932 and continued to be one of the city landmarks for tourists and residents.

Sky Terrace Ballroom (Park Hotel):

In the year 1930, the Austro-Hungarian architect László Hudec designed the tallest and most modern hotel in Shanghai and with it, the most exclusive ballroom. Built in the 1930s in a Gothic-Modernist style, the Park Hotel was finally opened in 1934.

The key feature and space of the hotel would be the ballroom located on the 14th floor, known as the Sky Terrace. The ballroom, opened in 1935, was a representation of the building’s elegance and status with high ceilings and panoramic views of the city through the plate glass windows that matched the plate glass ceiling.

Park Hotel Sky Terrace Hall - Source Trip Advisor

The dance floor of the space consisted of a floral-decorated wooden surface

Initially opened that was eventually a closed space more suitable for the elite-visitors that required a protected space for the warmer and colder seasons.

Paramount Ballroom:

The Paramount Ballroom probably remains the most well-known and celebrated iconic ballroom from the city’s old days. It was designed by S. J. Young in modern Art Deco style in 1930, was completed in 1933 and went under many renovations until our days.

Today located at 228 Yuyuan Road, the space has been a constant reference to the city nightlife.

Paramount Hotel Ballroom - Source Shanghai Sojourns

After the Revolution, the building changed its use to the Red Capitol Cinema, to be abandoned and forgotten until the structure collapsed in 1990, killing a passing-by pedestrian.

After the event, the venue was renovated and refurbished until reopened in 2006. After some changes of uses, today the fourth-floor ballroom remains the old red and gold decoration style. 

The Paramount Shanghai - Source Smart Shanghai

THE THEATRES GOLDEN AGE

The new architectural spaces reflected the new urban classes, urban sociology and modes of consumption. Nanjing Lu became the commercial and cultural district that communicated with the new developed area of the Bund.  The development brought big stores and entertainment places like tearooms, hotel, roof-terrace and dancing rooms combined in the same buildings.

Besides stores, new places of entertainment like Guangming Grand Theater, today transformed into a cinema, Paramount Dance hall with its art deco hall and air-conditioning were built as well. It is the mythical period of the golden age of the Chinese cinema

 Grand Theatre Shanghai - Source Historic Shanghai

By the year 1930, the French Concession had 33 cinemas showing movies from the golden age of Hollywood. Of these, the Cathay Theatre retains is one of the survivors of that period, keeping the exteriors and showing a fully renovated interior dated in 2003.

The Majestic Theatre:

The last of these pieces of art present in this design golden age was the Majestic Theatre. With an audience capacity of nearly 1600 people, this theatre was the last piece of Art Deco built in the city during the Japanese occupation and the signature work of Chinese architect Fan Wenzhao.

Majestic Theatre - Source Shanghai Daly

The Majestic was the third cinema owned by Shanghai Amusement Co. Ltd., and became one of the first cinemas to show Western movies, attracting cinema stars, opera celebrities and ballet dancers. The space became also the venue for the first Shanghai People’s Congress in 1954.

 Although the building might be considered the last local piece of Art Deco, it also embraces the taste of the new International Style that was becoming well present in Europe.  So the fa?ade is a simple and raw element and the interiors keep the elegance and simplicity, smartly arranged to look continuous, free-flowing and dynamic, especially in the staircase.

Magestic Theatre - Source Shine

In 1989 the building was listed in the city’s first group of excellent historical buildings and became a municipal cultural relic for preservation.