The Cathay Mansions was built as a residential hotel in 1928. According to the supervising engineer, Mr. Levenspiel, this was the first highrise to be built on Shanghai's swampy ground. The venture was so successful, however, that in 1 931 the owners, the Cathay Land Company, decided to build an even more luxurious building in an adjoining open space affording room for a large garden for the residents.  This new apartment building was the Grosvenor House.

It was here that President Reagan stayed during his 1985 visit to Shanghai, in the elegant duplex flat with a marble staircase leading up to the bedrooms above. By coincidence, this same flat fifty years earlier was that of the wealthy playboy nephew of Mrs. Wellington Koo. He squandered his share of his grandmother's considerable  fortune in Shanghai, and later in America, where he then opened a catering business to survive.

Also in the Cathay complex were Grosvenor  Gardens.  These walk-up apartments faced Rue Cardinal Mercier (now Maoming Road) with boutiques at street level. The rents for these low-rise units were lower and they  were a very convenient and popular  address, being directly opposite the Cercle Sportif Francais and a few doors away from the Amateur Dramatic Club's "Green Room" bar, which was a popular daytime  rendezvous in the Lyceum Theatre.

The Cathay Mansions, Grosvenor House and Grosvenor Gardens are all now part of  the Jin Jiang Hotel complex and a large portion of the green sward is now filled with  uninspired, utilitarian buildings.