Astor House: Arriving Late

From our previous post let us slowly walk back across Garden Bridge and look at the entrance of the Astor House Hotel.

After the renovation of the hotel in 1911 it sported a smaller cantilevered canopy for a decade. Sometime in the early 1920s, this was replaced with the very expansive canopy with the name "ASTOR HOUSE HOTEL" in large letters in a very Art Deco type. The "A" in the type had a rather jauntily angled crossbar as can be seen in this gorgeous photo from around 1925.

The sides of this canopy seem to be made of glass and it looks like it might have been possible to light up the canopy from the inside. It must have looked very impressive at night for late arrivals with a Sikh doorman standing guard and the canopy all lit up.

It's not clear when the canopy was removed, but it was certainly gone when I arrived around midnight on May 15th, 1989. I remember arriving in a red Volkswagen Santana taxi from the train station, and the road was only dimly lit, with the hotel looming dark and grimy over the sidewalk.

Here we see guests arriving by rickshaw on a summer evening in 1933 with the gorgeous awning in a rare close-up view. This photo is of remarkable quality and clarity for the time and it was taken with some care - it makes me wonder if one of these men is somebody famous.

In the distance, we see the Japanese consulate, which was the center building of a set of three consulates on Whangpoa Road: The German one closest to the Astor, then the Japanese consulate followed by the US consulate. We'll visit consulate row in one of the upcoming posts.

After a quick nod to the Sikh guards, guests in the 1920s and 30s were greeted by the elaborate ceilings and pillars of this stunning entrance hall, brightly lit by its chandeliers and with a cool breeze wafting through when the doors where kept open in summer.

There are only very few photos of the Astor House interiors and this is the best one I know for the entrance hall. However, some of its details have survived the war and the general neglect of the early communist era and can still be seen today.

This is part of a brochure of the Pujiang Fandian - the name of the Astor House from the 1950s to the 1990s. I picked up this brochure in 1989 and the lobby at the time looked exactly like this.

The pillars and walls had been covered with very dark wood panelling at some point after the mid-1930s, and the hotel operators in the 1980s had blocked off sections of the old lobby with curtains and shelves for the hotel store.

I do remember buying chocolate bars and newspapers at this very counter in 1989. The front desk was managed at a reasonably professional level compared to many other hotels that accepted foreigners at that time period.

The front desk also offered money exchange, which in 1989 meant foreign currency to FEC - Foreign Exchange Certificates, which one then immediately exchanged for real Chinese Yuan in front of the hotel with the local black marketeers.