Шанхайдың бродвей сарайы: тарихы мен архитектурасы

The Broadway Mansions (, Shanghainese: Pahlowe Dusa) is a nineteen floor Art Deco five star hotel in Shanghai, China. and was for over five decades one of the primary symbols of Shanghai. Completed in 1934, the same year as the 19 feet taller Park Hotel. Upon its completion it became the tallest apartment building in Shanghai and remained so for several decades. Located near the confluence of Suzhou Creek and the Huangpu River, as well as the northern end of The Bund, it was built by the architectural and engineering firm of Palmer and Turner, and its completion in 1935 heralded the commencement of the high rise building era in Asia. It was Shanghai's "closest approach to a modern American skyscraper". It commands possibly the best view of the Bund and Huangpu. Originally called "The Broadway Mansions", it was renamed "Shanghai Mansions" by the Shanghai Municipal Council in 1951, but reverted to its original name after China opened up again to the West. The Broadway Mansions has been owned and operated by the Shanghai Hengshan (Group) Holdings Company (上海市人民政府直属的上海衡山集团) since at least 1985.

The Broadway Mansions Hotel is located at 20 Bei Suzhou Road (formerly 1 Broadway), Shanghai, in the North Bund area of the Hongkou District. close to its confluence with the Huangpu River. It is also bounded by Haining Road at the rear, and Wusong Road South on the west. It is across Daming Road from the Astor House Hotel. Before the mansions were constructed, a building owned by the British firm Shanghai electric construction company stood on its site.

Construction for the Broadway Mansions was started in 1930, and completed by October 1934, and cost $10 million (Mexican) (approximately US$3.4 million at that time). The Mansions was "originally built in 1934 as an exclusive residential hotel by the British". The Mansions was built by Ye Guang Estate Property Company, for the Shanghai Land Investment, Company controlled by Sir Victor Sassoon. Additionally, Sassoon owned the Cathay Mansions, another apartment building in the French Concession. Along with the two other tallest buildings in Shanghai, (the Palace Hotel and Sassoon House), these skyscrapers were all owned by Baghdadi Jews. The chairman of the board was Harry Edward Arnhold (born 16 January 1879 in Hong Kong), a Briton of German ancestry who had been educated in Britain, the chairman of the Sassoon controlled Arnhold & Company, a former Chairman of the British Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai (1923);
and the sometime chairman of the Shanghai Municipal Council (SMC). The primary developer and financer of the Broadway Mansions was Dr. Maurice Benjamin who had "financed and built much of the Shanghai coast". Benjamin, who was one of the more prominent landowners and businessmen in Shanghai, considered an expert on real estate, and a former member of the Shanghai Municipal Council (1920–1921), According to Maisie Meyer, "Broadway Mansions was hailed as Maurice Benjamin's masterpiece." On its completion, "this monumental pyramid was one of Shanghai's two tallest buildings." due to its proximity to Shanghai's Little Tokyo, comprising the Yangpu and Hongkou districts. In 1932, Little Tokyo comprised 4.25 square miles (11 km2) out of the entire 8.3 square miles (21 km2) of the International Settlement, and had about 30,000 Japanese residents, while there about 20,000 other foreigners in both the International Settlement and French Concession combined. The area was dominated and controlled by the Japanese military. After the surrender of non foreign Shanghai in November 1937, the International Settlement north of the Suzhou Creek, became almost exclusively Japanese in population.

The Japanese military commandeered the Broadway Mansions at 11.00am on 17 August 1937, with all non Japanese residents were ordered to evacuate from the Broadway Mansions by Japanese military sailors, often at the point of a bayonet. Soon the Japanese flag fluttered over the Broadway Mansions, to the great delight of Japanese admiral Isoroku Yamamoto who toured Shanghai in April 1938. The Mansions became a de facto Japanese possession. The Journal of the American Chamber of Commerce in the Philippines in discussing accommodation in Shanghai indicated: "Broadway Mansions? No. That's out. It is  mostly empty and in darkness. Some Japanese military are there, that is all. It is a British property, Shanghai's newest and best apartment hotel. Another indemnity is accumulating." Within a year most of the Mansions was rented to Japanese tenants. According to testimony presented to a US Congress sub committee, "Broadway Mansion is the "brain" of all Japanese control in Shanghai. Here most of the important combined policy meetings are held." The Mansions was used as the headquarters of the Japanese Army Liaison Office. Before December 1941, the Japanese military government held weekly (and later bi weekly) press conferences at the Broadway Mansions, and had offices there, including its transportation office. Foreigners who transgressed the Japanese rules of the territory occupied by Japan were held for questioning in the Mansions. After December 1938, as a result of a meeting of Japanese military authorities and the Japanese appointed puppet regime Reformed Government of the Republic of China led by Liang Hongzhi in Nanjing, which led to the formation "the Jiangsu Zhejiang Anhui Opium Suppression Bureau (Su Zhe Wan jinyanju) on the fifth floor of the Broadway Mansions. They were empowered to control the import and distribution of opium, to enforce licensing conditions for opium hongs and smokers, and to collect revenues from opium sales. All fifty eight licensed opium hongs in Shanghai  had to pick up their opium requisitions from the bureau on the fifth floor of the Broadway Mansions." The Reformed Government (and its successor, the Reorganized Government of Wang Jingwei) had its Foreign Affairs Bureau on the fourth floor of the Broadway Mansions.

In an unsuccessful attempt to increase the number of Japanese ratepayers and thus gain a majority on the Shanghai Municipal Council, which governed the International Settlement, a Japanese joint stock company purchased the Broadway Mansions in 21 March 1939 at a considerable loss to its owners for $5,000,000, with the considerable hesitation of H. E. (Harry) Arnhold, the chairman of the board. At that time The China Weekly Review reported: "One of the most luxurious hotels in Shanghai, Broadway Mansions has 156 hotel suites, 56 apartments, and eight offices and stores." Many non missionary foreigners were interned at the Broadway Mansions after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in December 1941.

After the Japanese surrender in August 1945, and the subsequent evacuation of its Japanese tenants and occupants, the Shanghai Municipal Council assumed ownership of the Broadway Mansions. The Council leased part of the Mansions to the foreign correspondents and the remainder to the United States military, where it became the headquarters for the American Military Mission that advised Chiang Kai shek and the Nationalist government of the Republic of China. The first five or six floors of the Broadway Mansions was occupied by officers of the U. S. Military Aid Group in China (MAGIC) and their dependents, with 400 billets being provided at the Mansions. The ground floor hosted a small American army hospital. American fighter pilot Bill Dunn, one of the first to occupy the Mansions in August 1945, recalled: "In Shanghai we were billeted at the Broadway Mansions, a beautiful European style hotel. There was only one problem: the rooms had no beds. Japanese officers had been billeted there, and they didn't use our type of bed, just sleeping mats. We got in touch with the hotel manager, who soon had a flock of Chinese setting up beds for us." About this time the manager was Michael Alexis Melgunow, a White Russian émigré, who had previously been the head chauffeur. After the alleged rape of two Chinese girls by American marines, approximately 5,000 anti American Chinese university students marched on 1 January 1947 on the Broadway Mansions, at that time home for 200 U. S. servicemen and their dependents, demanding the American military (which they likened to the British imperialists and the Japanese aggressors) leave China. The American owned China Weekly Review attributed the cause of the Chinese hostility to the "outrageous conduct" of American military police and other Army and Marine" personnel.

Also immediately after World War II, the Mansions hosted the Foreign Correspondents' Club of China, which had been founded in Chongqing on 18 May 1943, in its upper four floors, and billeted its members and their families, until soon after the establishment of the People's Republic of China in October 1949. making it "the most decorous press club in Asia". Journalist Richard Hughes joked that "Most of the correspondents lived there, incestuously". The bar was located in the penthouse on the 17th floor. The parties held in the Foreign Correspondents' Club were notorious. While there was intense fighting in the rural areas of China during the escalating Chinese Civil War, this "did not prevent the parties in the foreign correspondents' club atop the eighteen story Broadway Mansions, where dancing went on under gaily colored lights." "on its top floor foreigners and their White Russian mistresses used to dance the sultry Shanghai nights away." At these parties, "White Russian mistresses mingled with the American wives and black market speculators with military personnel", who all cursed the Chinese, including both the Communists and Chiang Kai shek. The Mansions also hosted a popular brothel in this period of American occupancy. While Edward Ward in 1947 considered the Mansions to be "one of the most modern luxury blocks of flats", Harrison Forman, noticing the changes in the Mansions since its halcyon days before the war, reflected on his return, "Now it looked rundown and motheaten." American Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Keyes Beech described the Broadway Mansions as "a steel and concrete apartment hotel that shot eighteen stories up from the bank of Soochow Creek, an American pillar of plenty", but indicated that "the best thing about the Broadway Mansions was the view".

From 25 May 1949, during the Chinese Civil War, one of the few significant battles in Shanghai was, what foreign residents called, "The Battle of Broadway Mansions", where for two days there was fierce fighting in the vicinity of the Broadway Mansions between the forces of the Kuomintang and the People's Liberation Army. From 30 April 1949 retreating Nationalist soldiers took possession of the Broadway Mansions, the nearby Central Post Office and the Embankment apartment complex. One hundred regulars from the army of the Republic of China commanded by a major, occupied the Broadway Mansions, as part of the Kuomintang's defense of Shanghai against the invading People's Liberation Army. Eventually, just over one thousand Nationalists defended the Broadway Mansions, where they had entrenched themselves on the upper floors, where they could shoot from the windows and from the roof. From the roof of Broadway Mansions, just above the Foreign Press Club, the Kuomintang snipers could rake the approaches to the Waibaidu Bridge by the advancing Communist forces. There about two hundred foreigners trapped within the Mansions during the battle, who were terrified for their safety. Peter Townsend recalls: "When you go out on the parapet of Broadway Mansions a bullet whistles above your head and you duck and crawl back on your hands and knees." Journalist Edwin Palmer Hoyt, whose apartment was in the Broadway Mansions, described the defeat of the Kuomintang: "The rot of the Kuomintang was definitely showing, nowhere more tragically than on Soochow Creek, just below the windows of the Broadway Mansions Hotel, the press hotel for the correspondents. From the windows of their comfortable apartments, they could look out at the steaming mass of humanity crowded beneath." Townsend reported during the final stages of the battle, "They're hanging on at Broadway Mansions  for nothing." According to Brown and Pickowicz, "The thousand or so Nationalists defending Broadway Mansions could have been subdued by the Communists in an hour if the latter had wanted to do so." The hoisting of the red flag with five yellow stars of the People's Republic of China on the roof of the Broadway Mansions on 27 May 1949 signified the final conquest of Shanghai by the People's Liberation Army. On 20 June 1949 the remaining 11 foreigners residing in the Broadway Mansions were ordered to leave to make room for political and military workers. By 1950 the Shanghai branch of the Chinese Government Information Office, had its headquarters in the Broadway Mansions.

On 1 May 1951, the Shanghai Municipal Council, who had assumed ownership in 1945, renamed the Mansions as "'Shanghai dasha' or the Grand Building of Shanghai", or as more popularly known in English, "the Shanghai Mansions". Apparently, in 1957, the Mansions was also known as the 'Golden River Hotel', which The Times journalist James Bertram (1910–1980) described as "an elaborate Western style hotel cum apartment house that has survived the war years and the Japanese occupation without visible change." In 1956 British novelist and film producer Rubeigh James Minney, who visited Shanghai in 1956, referred to the Shanghai Mansions' store on the ground floor: "On the ground floor there is a very superior general store", where, "the atmosphere was much more elegant: by contrast one might say it was on the Harrods level." In 1965, the Mansions was described as "the huge ugly building in Shanghai". Belgian journalist Jacques Marcuse concurred with that assessment, describing the Mansions in 1967 as "that tall yet squat ugly building". while in the same year, Sally Backhouse, after describing "slab like buildings that towered above the rest, holed by myriad windows and grimy with dirt, like dry old discolored cheese", indicated that "the largest of these was the famous 'Broadway Mansions', in capitalist days a block of luxury flats and rented buildings." Another resident described the Mansions in the mid 1960s as a huge hotel, but "Shanghai Mansion is not the most luxurious hotel in Shanghai."

On 23 February 1967, a "grave incident" occurred at the Shanghai Agricultural Department, that became known as the Shanghai Mansions Incident. During the period of the Shanghai Revolution (or January Revolution) of January 1967, which led to the short lived Shanghai People's Commune, on 20 February, men "were sent to the Shanghai mansion to urge the [striking] workers to go back to their agricultural production posts." On 24 February 1967, the evening the Shanghai Commune was renamed the Shanghai Municipal Revolutionary Committee at the instigation of Mao Zedong, "the committee sent some 'representatives' on a 'fact finding investigation' to  the Shanghai Mansion, the site of an apparently large but undetermined colony of returnees from the countryside." These 'counter revolutionary" forces were suppressed, and the ring leaders were punished. However, after this incident "they continued to deploy large numbers around the Shanghai Mansions day and night, beating up public security personnel."

During the Cultural Revolution, the Mansions was renamed the Anti Imperialism Building by Chinese Red Guards.

By 1973, the Mansions was renamed in English the Shanghai Mansions Hotel, but retained its Chinese name. By 1973 the Mansions was the third choice accommodation provided for Overseas Chinese: "If there isn't enough room at these two hotels, then Overseas Chinese are put into the sky scraping Shanghai Mansions Hotel overlooking the Bund. During the 1970s the Mansion was also the primary residence for "foreign experts". Edoarda Masi, an Italian language teacher, who lived at the Mansions for a year between 1976 and 1977, described the Mansions as "a mastodon among the low buildings that surround it; walls, plumbing, closets are all solid." Referring to the Mansion's popularity, Masi indicated: "Depending on the time of year, this large room is half empty or crowded with tourists. The Dasha, which is known in English as Shanghai Mansions, for long stopovers. By 1978 the Mansions was used increasingly as a hotel for visitors from Third World countries, thus improving the accommodation situation in Shanghai. An American academic who stayed at the Mansions in the summer of 1982, said: "With its somewhat shabby decor, the hotel lobby at Shanghai Mansions was a hangout in the evenings for the African and Middle Eastern students of Shanghai." By 1984, "The Shanghai Mansions, consisting of a main and a side building, is a hotel accommodating foreign tourists, businessmen, overseas Chinese." At that time the Mansions had 370 guest rooms (including some deluxe suites) and 1,468 beds. In 1985 one visitor referred to the "Thirties fortress of Shanghai Mansions, its thick brick walls pocked by black windows. The General Manager of the Mansions from 1985 to at least 1999 was Tao Pei Tai (born 1 August 1946), who was also Deputy General Manager of Hengshan Group Holding Co., the owner of the Mansion. In 1989 a double room in the Mansions was US$50 per night. One 1991 Chinese travel guide extolled the service ethic of the Mansion: "The Shanghai Mansions adheres strictly to the guideline of "guests first, service first, courtesy first and tidiness first". However, after September 1993 the Mansions was no longer the dominant landmark in the Shanghai landscape:
The announcement of the metropolis has also changed. It is no longer the magnificent art deco silhouette of the Shanghai Dasha [Shanghai Mansions] or the Waibaidu metallic bridge which marks the beginning of the center city and the Bund but, much further upstream, the Yangpu stayed girder bridge. Completed in 1993, it has become the huge waterway entrance into the city, as role reclaimed, the Nanpu Bridge located downstream. While acknowledging that "the view to the river from the rooftop terrace  is breathtaking", one 1993 guidebook warned, "Unfortunately, its location can become a drawback in the evening, as the sonorous horns of the river barges pose a constant challenge to sleep." In 1995 the Shanghai Mansions was evaluated by the State Tourism Bureau, and named one of the twelve national best star hotels.

By 1996, the Mansions was again renamed this time a reversion to a name similar to its original name the Broadway Mansions Hotel, reflecting the increased openness to the West as a result of the reforms of Deng Xiaoping, and the shift from providing long term residential apartment accommodation to that of a hotel. At that time the Mansions was described as "rather dull compared to other Shanghai hotels". The Hotel was partially renovated in 2003.