The Park Hotel (at far right in this nighttime view of Shanghai), was designed by Laszlo Hudec in the Art-Deco style and was completed in 1934. At 272 feet high, the hotel was the city's highest building in the 1930s, with 22 floors and more than 200 rooms and suites. The Sky Terrace ballroom, a nightclub on the hotel's top floor, featured a retractable roof so that guests could dance under the night sky.
The Chinese magazine Libailiu, or Saturday, described the Park Hotel as one of the few high-class cabarets that did not engage in "selling souls," or prostitution, like most others.
On the left side of the photo is the grandstand of Shanghai's race course. The Shanghai Race Club became one of the wealthiest corporations in the city from gambling revenue. When Mao Zedong came to power in 1949, he banned horse-racing as an immoral and capitalist pastime.
Virtual Cities Project/Institut d'Asie Orientale
