Sassoon in Shanghai and his Properties

An article on Shanghai CNN Go’s site about Victor Sassoon’s existing properties around Shanghai. I plumped for the Embankment Building which is often neglected as people all vote for the Cathay Complex and Cathay Hotel. He was a great builder and today’s shabby Shanghai property developers would do well to look at the amount of effort, time and money Sassoon devoted to his properties (yea, right Shanghai developers are going to do that!).

Interesting that many of the former Sassoon properties have become home to just about average restaurants (not mentioned in the article – CNN Go articles are always flattering or whatever they’re banging on about and nothing less than for some reason) – I ate the other week in the very average Dragon Phoenix restaurant where the food was basically very expensive but plain while the supposedly French restaurant at Hamilton House (called, eerr, Hamilton House) is equally uninspiring and the cafe in the Cathay cinema is a joke. Good to see the Cypress Hotel mentioned – I’m sure that used to be BP’s place in Shanghai in the 80s and the now disgraced Tony Haywood used to live there – bet he wished he’d stayed.

Strangely the pictures are all recent ones – here’s a couple of older pics of the buildings in their glory days:

The Cathay Hotel on the Bund

Cathay Mansions