Sassoon House — the Peace Hotel
The green pyramid at the corner of the Bund and Nanjing Road is where Jazz Age Shanghai checked in: Sir Victor Sassoon’s Cathay Hotel of 1929, still pouring drinks and still playing jazz as the Fairmont Peace Hotel.
At a glance
Sassoon House rose between 1926 and 1929 at Bund 20, the most valuable corner in Asia, where Nanjing Road meets the Huangpu waterfront. Designed by Palmer & Turner on a reinforced-concrete frame for Sir Victor Sassoon — heir to the Baghdadi-Jewish trading dynasty whose real-estate empire remade interwar Shanghai — it stands 77 metres to the roofline and 83 to the tip of its pyramidal crown, the sheathed green summit that became the emblem of the Bund. Its upper floors opened in 1929 as the Cathay Hotel, instantly the most glamorous address between Bombay and San Francisco; since 1956 the building has been the Peace Hotel, restored and reopened in 2010 under the Fairmont flag.
Key facts
- Built: 1926–1929
- Architects: Palmer & Turner; reinforced-concrete structure
- Client: Sir Victor Sassoon
- Height: 77 m to the roofline; 83 m to the spire of the green pyramidal roof
- Original hotel: The Cathay, opened 1929
- Today: Fairmont Peace Hotel (north building), restored and reopened 2010
- Address: Bund 20, corner of Nanjing Road, Shanghai
- GPS: 31.24111, 121.48472 — View on Google Maps
History
Victor Sassoon moved his fortune from Bombay to Shanghai in the 1920s and spent it on towers; Sassoon House was the flagship, holding his offices, luxury shops and, from 1929, the Cathay Hotel with its river-view suites. The Cathay was where Noël Coward finished Private Lives in bed with influenza in 1930, where newsreel Shanghai drank and danced until the city’s worlds collapsed — war in 1937, occupation, revolution. Renamed the Peace Hotel in 1956, it carried its Art Deco interiors through the People’s Republic decades with remarkable luck, and a three-year restoration returned it to service in 2010 as the Fairmont Peace Hotel. The Old Jazz Band — whose veteran musicians have played the repertoire of the thirties for decades — remains the most famous act in the building.
What you see
From the Bund promenade, Sassoon House reads as a mountain of Shanghai granite stepping back toward its pyramid — the copper roof, weathered green, rising over the corner like a lighthouse for the whole waterfront. The detailing is Deco at its most disciplined: vertical bays, chevroned metalwork, and at street level the arcade of shopfronts that made the building a city in itself. Inside, the octagonal atrium lobby with its Lalique-style glass, the tiled corridors and the ballroom preserve the Cathay’s world; the ninth-floor terraces frame the classic panorama across the Huangpu to Pudong’s towers — ninety years of skyline in one view.
Practical information
- Operating luxury hotel — the lobby and public areas are accessible to visitors; the Jazz Bar has nightly sets (cover charge applies)
- A small museum room on the mezzanine tells the Cathay’s history — ask at the concierge
- The facade is best from the river promenade; the pyramid catches late-afternoon light
Getting there
Bund 20 stands at the corner of Nanjing Road East, five minutes on foot from East Nanjing Road metro station (lines 2 and 10). The Bund promenade runs directly in front, across Zhongshan Road.
Nearby
- The Bund ensemble — the full parade of banks and trading houses along the Huangpu
- Nanjing Road — China’s most famous shopping street, beginning at the hotel’s door
- Pudong skyline viewpoints — directly across the river promenade
- Shanghai — The Bund and the Art Déco of the East — the CHO city guide
Sources
- Wikipedia: “Peace Hotel” — dates, architects, heights, Cathay and Peace history
- Historic Hotels Then & Now, “Fairmont Peace Hotel (1929)” — restoration and reopening 2010
- MOFBA (mofba.org), “Sir Victor Sassoon’s Old Shanghai Hospitality Empire” — Sassoon context
- Wikidata Q11140758 — coordinates
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