Shanghai Club Building
The Shanghai Club Building is a three-storey Baroque Revival building in Shanghai along The Bund. The club was originally named 'The Correspondent's Club'. It is currently part of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel.
Structure
The original Shanghai Club was a three-storey red-brick building constructed the British in 1861. The club was rebuilt in 1905[1].
The original Club was torn down and rebuilt in 1910 with reinforced concrete in a Baroque Revival design. The large first floor dining room had black and white marble flooring, while the entrance staircase used imported white Sicilian marble.
History
The club was a British men's club and was the most exclusive club in Shanghai during the heyday of the 1920s and 1930s. The membership fee was $125 and monthly dues were $9.
United States President Ulysses S. Grant was hosted there when he visited Shanghai in 1879.
The second-floor was famous for the "Long Bar." This was an unpolished mahogany, L-shaped bar that measured 110.7 feet by 39 feet. On one side of the bar was a smoking room and library, while on the other side was a billiards room. It was famous for being the world's longest bar at one time[1]. Noel Coward said, laying his cheek on it, that he could see the curvature of the earth.
There were also forty guest rooms on the second and third floors. It later became the Dongfeng Hotel, and even housed a KFC restaurant from 1990 to 1996.
This restored building as of October 2010 is the Waldorf Astoria Shanghai, a luxury hotel.
The old boys’ club that controlled Shanghai ran it from the leather-and-whiskey soaked confines of the Shanghai Club on the Bund, where membership was restricted to white males of a certain class. Even the famous 34-metre Long Bar on the second floor was subject to a strict hierarchy: the prime Bund-facing end of the L-shaped mahogany bar was the territory of the taipans and bank manager, with the social scale falling as one moved down the length of the bar.The grand, Neo-baroque white marble building opened its doors in 1910 to reveal what would ultimately be Shanghai’smost luxurious, most exclusive club. A massive Italianate Grand Hall, with ceilings over 12 feet high, supported by enormous Ionic columns. The hall ended in a curving marble staircase, where twin elevators whisked members to the upper floors. Here, there were all the requisites of a proper gentleman’s club: a smoking room and a library – reported to hold more volumes than the Shanghai Public Library – a billiards room, a dining room for long, boozy lunches and guest rooms on top two floors for resident members. Copyright theshanghairaceclub tour
See also
References
External links
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