Shanghai’s Metropole Hotel American Bar Soon to be Gone

Amazingly Shanghai is still to be the site for the 2015 World Congress on Art Deco – this seems about as sensible a decision as making Afghanistan the site of the 2015 World Congress of Women’s Rights and Religious Tolerance. The more Shanghai destroys, the more it is rewarded – if the World Congress (whoever they are?) thought that awarding Shanghai a conference would save anything then it appears they are much mistaken. A sick joke perhaps? Now word reaches me that the lovely art-deco Metropole Hotel in Shanghai is about to get a “refurbishment”/”make over” – I think we can all agree that this will translate as a “trashing”. So, if you can – pop along and see the American Bar and lobby in its full art-nouveau glory before it’s refurbished out of existence. Shanghai’s original Metropole Hotel, built towards the end of the nineteenth century, was opposite the old race course on Bubbling Well Road (Nanjing Road West). That’s long gone and not a trace remains. The current Metropole was built on the junctions of Honan Road (Henan Road Middle) and Foochow Road (Fuzhou Road) in 1930 (the first picture below shows the building around the time of final completion) with the (still in existence) Hamilton House attached. There was also a Metropole Theatre not too far away on Thibet Road (Xizhang Road). The American Bar as you can see below is a key part of the lobby with the wonderful staircase – just what will survive the refurbishment will be seen but previous hotel make overs in Shanghai suggest not a lot. The American Bar was a hang out for many Americans, and others, in pre-war Shanghai – the American Club (on Foochow Road) as well as the American Chamber of Commerce (moved around but in Hamilton House for a long time), the American Court for China and the various administrative centres of the International Settlement were all close by.