By the 1860 's Shanghai was booming.  Half a million Chinese refugees had sought protection there during the turmoil of two mid-century rebellions in the countryside, and downtown land lease prices had increased a thousandfold. (Land could not be purchased outright, but only leased for set periods of time.) The city had already divided itself into four settlements:  the American, the    British, the French and the walled "native city" of the Chinese.  Later the Americans merged with the British to form the International Settlement.

The International Settlement and the French Concession were envisaged as enclaves for foreigners only, but they soon became the home of thousands of Chinese, who preferred the rule of law and the safety of the foreigners’ enclaves to their own walled city.  The Chinese gradually came to comprise the largest population of the foreign settlements.

As in all boom towns prostitution, dope and gambling flourished. in 1864 the British consul noted that of the ten thousand Chinese residences in the foreign settlements, 668 were brothels.  Shanghai started early on a path that would later earn it the reputation as the wickedest city in the east, an era which ended only after the communist take-over in 1949.

As the Chinese and the foreigners settled in side by side, the architecture of both cultures competed for space. Western architecture on a grand scale dominated the  "Bund" (an Anglo-Indian word meaning a river embankment), giving way to low Chinese-style buildings on the streets leading westward.  As foreign businessmen began to flock to the city in increasing numbers, their offices and bank buildings became more numerous and more opulent.

In time many businessmen chose to live away from the bustling waterfront, and moved southward and westward into the French Concession.  The dividing line between it and the International Settlement had originally been a stagnant creek, which the French finally covered over with an east-west running street they called Avenue Edward VII (today Yan'an Dong Lu).  Although there were no actual boundary markers, so complete was the separation that a trolley ride from one concession to the other entailed a change of streetcars. Each concession   had its own police force (Sikh vs. Annamese), fire brigades, power plants and even light poles.  The British ones were square, wood, and carried 220v, the French ones trefoil, concrete, and carried 110v electricity.

The Taipans, the wealthy foreign owners or managers of Shanghai's large banks and "hongs" (trading companies), preferred to build their magnificent mansions in the fashionable west end of the French Concession, with its luxury restaurants and shops and its broad avenues lined with plane trees brought in from France. in the period between the two World Wars, the Taipans vied with each other in erecting the most elegant edifices, outfitted with   the very latest fixtures and furnishings. There they installed   their families, surrounded with luxuriant gardens and fleets of Chinese servants.

With the introduction in the late 1920's of new techniques which allowed the construction of high-rise buildings, Shanghai's skyline began to take on a new appearance. This was the great age of the Art Deco apartment building, which was to change the face of Shanghai. Ranging from the simple to the sumptious, they were especially popular with those who did not want, or could not afford, the care and cost of keeping up a large residence.

 The 1930's were to see Shanghai's last burst of western- style construction.  In 1937 Japanese forces occupied the Chinese sections of the city, but until December 1941 they respected the boundaries of the concessions, primarily due to lack of manpower.  Even with the Japanese occupation, however, building did not stop.   Many ambitious projects already on the drawing boards went ahead to completion in the following two years.

The Second World War saw the internment of the British and Americans, along with those of other allied countries. When the Westerners returned to their homes in 1945 they found them mostly intact, although often thoroughly looted.  They tried to pick up the threads of their lives, to reopen their businesses and make up for the lost years.

 Some succeeded, but it was never to be the same again. The Westerners' power and position in Asia had eroded; the Asians had seen in the war that the white man could be bested by a fellow-Asian, albeit one they despised. The Westerners were never able to pick up the momentum of trade or to rule their fiefdoms free of Chinese intervention.

With the "liberation" of the city in 1949 and the establishment of the communist-ruled People's Republic of China, the last vestiges of western civilization began to fade away. Unable to do business any longer the westerners left, a little over one hundred years after first arrived. Could they ever have imagined, those who built their magnificent banks and office buildings on the Bund, that their tenure there would last only two decades?

China once again closed its door to the west, and a great wave of xenophobia swept over the country.  The little of western ideas and technology that survived in Shanghai was in her western architecture.  Buildings, solidly and skillfully erected with western techniques and in the western style, have lasted until today - outlasting many built by the Chinese long after.
Shanghai's most acute problem today is its population density.  In its heyday, the 1930's, it was a city of three million inhabitants; today the city proper has about nine million.  Her financial resources are stretched thin and housing construction has lagged far behind the demand. Money needed for the maintainance of old buildings has more often been spent in the construction of new ones. Sterile high-rises have sprouted all over the city and its suburbs.

It is however due to Shanghai's lack of money that we owe the wealth of its architectural treasures.  Other more prosperous cities in the area - Hong Kong immediately comes to mind - have sacrificed their colonial architectural heritage to progress.

The Shanghai of this book is primarily a Shanghai built by foreigners for foreigners, in the style of the country from which they came - and to which they would ultimately return. The ensuing me lange of styles is what makes Shanghai unique.  There is no city in the world today with such a variety of architectural offerings, buildings which stand out in welcome contrast to their modern  counterparts. Suffering from decades of benign neglect and multiple modifications, these multinational structures offer little islands of sophistication and style in a city that seems to have lost its sense of style.

We have sought out the best of the buildings still remaining, but they are disappearing fast.  Before it is too late, we want to give you one last look.