In my previous post in this section of my blog site, and in an article I recently published in the journal Built Heritage, I focused on several ballrooms that can still be visited here in Shanghai today, including the Paramount, Cathay (Peace) Hotel, Park Hotel, and French Club (Okura Garden Hotel), and Astor Hotel ballrooms. In this next entry, I write about some of the ballrooms that have long since disappeared.

I’ve already posted on many occasions about the Majestic Hotel Ballroom of the 1920s and Metropole Gardens Ballroom of the 1930s, both of which were located on the corner of Jiangning Road and Nanjing West Road, where the mall known as Meilongzhen Guangchang 梅龙镇广场 (Westgate Mall) is found today. The Majestic Hotel was destroyed in the early 1930s as the global depression killed its business. The Metropole Gardens Ballroom was built in the mid-1930s and probably lasted through the 1980s though I can’t confirm this for sure.

This entry focuses on some of the other long-lost and forgotten ballrooms of Old Shanghai that I’ve been searching for all these years.

Ever since I first came to Shanghai in 1996 to conduct research on the forgotten and submerged history of the city’s notorious nightlife in the 1920s-1930s, I have been searching for the original spaces that once housed the city’s world-famous nightclubs, ballrooms, and cabarets. In the early years of this research, I managed to locate many of those spaces, including the ones mentioned above, while others have eluded me over the years. Recently, I’ve been going back out onto the city streets to find some places that I never properly located before. Unfortunately, so much of the city’s built environment from that era has been destroyed since then that it isn’t always possible to find the original spaces.

One of my fondest sets of memories concerning this search has been the explorations that I did with Tess Johnston, whom everyone knows as the doyenne of Shanghai history, particularly when it comes to the built environment. I recall going with Tess to the original building and ballroom that once housed the Santa Anna Ballroom in the 1930s, where Earl Whaley’s orchestra once played (I believe it was being used by a bank at the time). This was on “Love Lane,” which later became known as Wujiang Road. This would have been around 20 years ago. Now, Wujiang Road has been completely rebuilt as a pedestrian lane full of shops and restaurants, and that old building has long since disappeared into the mists of memory. 

Another place I first visited with Tess was the Flower Market on Shaanxi South Road, which once was the site of the Canidrome, a greyhound race track in the heart of the old French Concession. The stands of the original race track were still embedded in the building that housed the Flower Market, and behind them was a grand old hotel, where trumpeter Buck Clayton’s jazz orchestra played in 1934 along with the legendary jazz pianist Teddy Weatherford. (You can find Buck Clayton’s photos here).

We visited the old ballroom where Buck and Teddy once performed, which was then a space dedicated to a puppet troupe. In 2006, that building was knocked down to make way for a new Culture Center. Once again this is now a fine performance space, hosting world-class theatrical and musical performances, even if one laments the disappearance of yet another Shanghai landmark from the 1920s-1930s era.

A couple years ago, I managed to locate another building that once housed a ballroom where another African American jazz ensemble introduced China to the Jazz Age in the 1920s. This was the Plaza Hotel, where in 1926, Teddy Weatherford had his first gig in Shanghai, playing with drummer Jack Carter and singer and trumpet player Valaida Snow, who headlined their act.

It turns out that in the depression-era 1930s, the Plaza Hotel was sold to new owners and was converted into private apartments, known as the York Apartments. Katya Knyazeva helped me to confirm the site of the building through some online sleuthing of her own, where she was able to dig up a photo of the original Plaza Hotel in its heyday. You will not find any mention of the Plaza Hotel on the historical plaque on the building today, nor does anybody in this city seem to know anything about the Plaza Hotel today. Yet this was one of the most important spaces for the Jazz Age in the 1920s, not just in Shanghai but globally.

Yesterday, I went out into the rain in search of two ballrooms that were also quite influential in their day. The first is the original Carlton Cafe, once located on Ningbo Road not far from the Bund. This cafe was run by Louis Ladow, one of the most influential people in the history of Shanghai’s nighttime entertainment. Born in Kentucky, Louis Ladow came to Shanghai at the end of the 19th century, where he worked in some of the finest hotels, including the Astor House. He started the Carlton Cafe in 1910, and around 1917-1919, this was the first space in Shanghai to offer regular performances of jazz music and dancing. In the 1920s, he built a new Carlton Cafe on Bubbling Well Road across from the Race Course (now People’s Park), where the Grand Cinema is now located. American jazz bandleader Whitey Smith, who was recruited by Ladow to come to Shanghai in 1922, tells the story of the Carlton Cafe in his memoir I Didn’t Make a Million.

In 1927, Louis Ladow started a new club in the space of the original Carlton Cafe on Ningbo Road, called Ladow’s Tavern. He died in November 1928, and his sons arrived in Shanghai soon after and took over his ballroom businesses. His son John Ladow continued to run Ladow’s Tavern, while his son Louis (junior) ran a club called the Casanova, or Ladow’s Casanova on Avenue Edward VII (now Yan’an Road). Ladow’s Tavern operated as a cafe, restaurant, and jazz cabaret and was quite popular until it shut down amidst the depression in 1934. It is listed in ads and in the phone book as having the address 33 Ningbo Road. Yesterday I went to that location, only to find a relatively new high-rise building had been built on that block between Sichuan North Road and Jiangxi Road. This is unfortunate, as all of the other blocks in that neighborhood still feature original buildings from the 1920s-1930s.

After roaming around that neighborhood and strolling up Jiangxi Road, which is a wonderful street to see old buildings from that era, I made my way over to the vicinity of the Astor House on Huangpu Road and searched for another location: 94 Broadway (Huangpu Road) which once housed the Savoy Ballroom, another influential and neglected nightlife establishment from the 1920s-1930s era. It was located in between the Russian and Japanese Consulates, but I wasn’t able to find that exact address—the numbers seem to skip from 80 to 100 now. So I can only guess that perhaps it’s the green building located next to the former Japanese Consulate along the Huangpu River.

And so, the quest still goes on to recover the distant long-lost memories and landscapes of the city during its decadent heyday, an obsession that I share with many people who are endlessly fascinated with the lost world of treaty port Shanghai.