Astor House: The Peacock Hall

After a prolonged rebuilding project of the interior of the Astor House in 1923, a new ballroom opened in December of that year: The Peacock Hall.

This new ballroom was ambitious - the best materials, beautiful interiors, the largest ballroom in all of Shanghai with the latest entertainment technology.

The owners of the hotel at that time - Hong Kong and Shanghai Hotels Ltd. - had a long-standing relationship with Abelardo Lafuente García-Rojo who designed the interiors for several of their hotels in the Far East. He designed the new Peacock Hall and we still have his design sketches like the one reproduced here.

The opening of the new ballroom was a social highlight in Shanghai and archive.org has an edition of the North China Herald from the 29th of December 1923 with details of the opening:

"Those who attended the first night declared that words could not describe the marvellous combination of colours and lights that have been the product of the mind of Mr, A. Lafuente, the designing architect."

"Probably the most novel feature of the decorative scheme, excepting the incandescent mirrors, was the peacock shell utilized by the orchestra, and in particular the effects of light produced by the electrical staff. Five primary colours have been used for still effects throughout the variegated bedecked panels of feathers, but the revolving cylinder hidden added hundreds of shades of light that blended and dissolved over the whole giving the appearance of running waves of rainbow hues."

It's a little surprising that there are only very few photos of this ballroom in its heyday and I'm still on the lookout for better material. This photo above has been reproduced widely and my guess is that it shows the ballroom sometime in the late 1920s. It shows the peacock-feather shaped bandstand - which gave the ballroom its name - in its own alcove in relation to the rest of the ballroom and we do have some photos of the bandstand in use.

There have been several house bands over the years and there were frequent guest appearances by touring bands. I don't know who this specific band here is, but it's one of the better photos of the peacock bandstand. It would be fascinating to see a color photo of the stained-glass feathers as they were lit in different rotating colors.

Here we have the Serge Ermoll Orchestra, which played the Peacock Hall frequently in the early 1930s. There is quite a lot of interesting background on Serge Ermoll and his time in China in this article written by a descendent of the musician.

I've posted this photo before - it is from the time of the Japanese occupation around 1942 and shows a very shadowy view of the Peacock Hall with the main skylight covered, probably to avoid air bombardment. This is the last photo that I know that shows the peacock band shell in the ballroom.

The Peacock Hall had a rather surprising second career, returning out of a decades-long slumber to host the Shanghai Stock Exchange from 1990 to 1997. The rotating colorful lights of the peacock feather band stand had been replaced with the blinking lights of the stock exchange board.

I stayed in the hotel during that period several times and it was a strange scene - coming into the hotel, to the right was the lobby full of backpackers hoping for a cheap stay in one of the dormitories, and straight ahead was the door to the stock exchange, where the first new millionaires of China's re-opened economy were minted.

It was possible to walk straight onto the trading floor in the ballroom, but it never occurred to me at the time to take any photos. Missed opportunity.

This photo from 2011 shows the now restored ballroom in the Astor House. It now hosts the exhibition of the Stock Exchange Museum, but it seems to still be in use for occasional events. Would love to hear from anybody that has visited in recent years.