Astor House: The Bridge-Head

The combined first block of Broadway and Seward Road on the west side of the Astor House Hotel connects with the Garden Bridge, which leads to the Bund and downtown Shanghai. It was certainly an attractive address for businesses of all kinds, as there was a steady stream of traffic from the Bund to Hongkew and beyond.

From our previous blog post we have only taken a few steps - the Japanese Post Office can still be seen on the very right in this photo from the late 1910s. On the very left is the building of the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank that we visited before, followed by the intersection with Broadway.

In this rarely photographed corner of the Astor building we see a sign for THE ASTOR Hosiery and Drapery store at No.10 Broadway, which seems to have started as Oscar Landau Draperies in 1909. Curiously that sign was still visible 16 years later.

In the distance we see the still relatively new Garden Bridge - in this card somewhat uniquely named as Public Garden Bridge. It is an early photo and the traffic is all pedestrians, hand drawn carts and rickshaws. This bucolic scene will not last much longer as Shanghai is modernizing at a fast pace.

We've been walking half a block towards Garden Bridge, and we turned around and let 20 year pass by. It's the 15th of February 1938, and British troops are marching along Broadway to the wharves a few blocks further east. They are deploying to Hong Kong on this day.

But there is more to see here - beyond the marching columns of soldiers we get a good view of the building next to the tall Japanese Post Office building. The store sign is partially readable "...LIVEIRA &...". This is the headquarters of H. Oliveira & Son, a company trading in machinery, tools, and engineering supplies since 1911. The office was located here at No. 1 Seward Road from 1936 until 1941 and the company moved to Hong Kong in the late 1940s.

To the left of this building we have a few stores that are hard to identify. One seems to be CEYLON GEMS - a jewelry store still listed in a 1949 business directory. It is among several other small businesses with unreadable signage.

But then closer to our left, we see a large storefront with a prominent sign - the Astoria Confectionary & Tea Room at No.33 Broadway.

Founded by Kyriaco Dimitriades in the early 1920, one can only assume that the name "Astoria" was no coincidence. The cafe seems to have expanded rapidly, as it encompassed ever more of the small neighborhood stores. This photo is from 1937, with the cafe having taken on its final form in this location. I wonder who is that man in the center of the photo that seems to stare straight at us.

The pastry chefs of the Astoria provided elaborate cakes for weddings and birthdays, which were probably quite often ordered for celebrations across the street at the Astor House. Just look at that amazing cake under construction!

The dining room of the Astoria provided an Old Europe atmosphere and one can only imagine the many fascinating meetings that must have taken place amidst the heavy furniture, with waiters in formal uniforms bringing out coffee and sweets for the patrons to enjoy.

The older gentleman at the very right in this photo sure seems to have a good time here.

The Astoria lasted here until 1949, when the business relocated to Taipei. Amazingly enough, the Astoria Confectionary & Café can still be found in Taipei today.

Let's have one more look at this building, just a few months after the Astoria Confectionary & Tea Room had closed its doors for the last time in 1949. This is the neighbor to the left, the Bridge-Head Cafe and Bar.

This end of the row of buildings just narrowly avoided destruction in 1930, as the building to its left - the corner with the many-named Mactavish drug store - was razed to make space for the Broadway Mansions. We see the back of the giant Broadway Mansions to the left in this shot, but we'll visit there at length in a future post.

Walking around the corner, so the Broadway Mansions are behind us, we see the south side of the Bridge-Head Cafe and Bar. In the distance to the right we see the HSBC building, where we started this blog post 30 years earlier and one block away.

There is a lone KMT (Nationalist) soldier guarding the area, and he rightfully looks wary - this photo is from May 1949, only days before the final battle for Shanghai between the retreating Nationalist army and the Communist forces. Over 150,000 Nationalist troops were killed in this decisive battle for Shanghai's - and China's - future.

Next time it's time to turn north for one more look at the Astor House block.