The Peace Hotel was built in 1929, formerly known as the Chinachem Hotel. It is a Chicago School Gothic building with a height of 77 meters and a total of 12 floors. The Chinachem Hotel was built by Alice Victor Sassoon, a wealthy British Jew at the time. The exterior walls are made of granite stones. You enter through the revolving hall door. The lobby floor is paved with milky white Italian marble. , the top bronze engraved chandelier is luxurious and elegant, and has the reputation of "the first floor in the Far East". After the hotel was completed, it became famous in Shanghai and was famous for its luxury. It mainly received guests from the financial community, business community and celebrities from various countries. For example, American General Marshall, President Stuart, and the playwright Noel Coward's masterpiece "Private Life" were written in the Peace Hotel. In the 1930s and 1940s, Lu Xun and Soong Ching Ling came to the hotel to meet foreign friends such as Chaplin and Bernard Shaw. After liberation, the hotel reopened in 1956 and was named Peace Hotel. In recent years, the Peace Hotel has renovated its guest rooms, restaurants, etc., giving it a new look, while the architectural style still maintains its original appearance, making guests staying here feel like they are in a time tunnel, with a fusion of modernity and tradition, trendy and retro, and Thousands of thoughts abound in the intertwining. Edit this paragraph: Peace Hotel and Lalique Art Peace Hotel was built in 1926 and opened for business in 1929. It was formerly the Cathay Hotel and was built by the British Jew Ellice Victor Sassoon. Sasson) built. The Sassoon Building officially opened on September 5, 1929. The Chinachem Hotel was opened on the fourth to ninth floors of the building. The operation characteristic of the Chinachem Hotel was that it regarded itself as a luxury hotel. Whether it was in architectural design or decorative art, it was at that time All are unparalleled. His breathtaking charm is reflected in the aura of European classical court art that he created, which exudes all the time. The most amazing thing is that several half-foot-square Lalique art glass ornaments are inlaid in several restaurants and reception rooms. There are screens of flowers and birds, flying pigeons spreading their wings, and fish flying on the bottom. When you are in it, you will suddenly feel like a crystal world. Not only that, Sassoon also invited Lalique's store into the building. It is located in the shopping mall area on the west side of the building, which has attracted many collectors. Today's Chinese young people may feel unfamiliar with Lalique art glass, but for those "old carats" and "last xiakai" who have lived in Shanghai for more than half a century, it is really a far-away place. Beautiful dream. Lalique art glass is a precious special glass art that was popular all over the world in the last century, especially in Europe. Its founder is Frenchman René Lalique. 1925 was the peak period of Rene's glass art creation. In this year, his works won a sensational reputation at the International Art Fair in Paris. Its most famous product is a glass art called Opalescent glass, which is dissolved in antimony, arsenic and cobalt during the firing process. The works produced using this process have special color effects, including transparent and frosted. This kind of product looks milky white when viewed from a distance, dark blue when viewed up close, and bright red when viewed against the light, like a ball of fire, which is very strange. After Rene's death, his son and granddaughter inherited the business and improved it respectively, resulting in the second and third generations of Lalique's works of art. The Lalique art glass products currently sold in the European market and in Shanghai Dickson Mall are all third-generation products. The only way to see first-generation products is through the auction market, with prices ranging from hundreds of pounds to tens of thousands of pounds. A few years ago, someone from the Lalique family came to the hotel to appreciate the charm of their ancestors, claiming that the existing Lalique products in the hotel were worth half of the hotel's assets. Treasure of Peace - Aluminum Record The predecessor of the Peace Hotel is the Chinachem Hotel. It is a luxury hotel built by the British Jew Sassoon who did not hesitate to invest a lot of money. The exterior wall of the hotel built in 1929 is made of granite stones, with gold and pyramid-shaped green copper corrugated spires; revolving hall doors; spacious halls and corridors; Italian marble floors and columns; old-fashioned bronze lamps; The "Lalique" lighting in the exquisitely decorated restaurant; the unique Nine Kingdoms-style special suite; everything is so perfect, gorgeous and simple, and enjoys the reputation of "the first floor in the Far East". Chinachem Hotel's "top quality consciousness" is also reflected in its "exclusive news" gadgets from time to time.
For example, a customer wants to hold a birthday, wedding, anniversary, etc. celebration in a hotel. In other hotels, people leave as soon as the celebration is over, but Chinachem Hotel can record a small aluminum record for the customer as a souvenir. . Today, there is still a keeper of this small aluminum record on the Dead Beach, namely Mr. Tang Wuji, the grandnephew of Tang Shaoyi, the first prime minister of the Republic of China. It was an audio recording of his grandfather, Mr. Zhou Jinjue's 60th birthday celebration. September 18, 1938 on the lunar calendar was Mr. Zhou’s 60th birthday. The celebration will be held in the grand restaurant of Chinachem Hotel. There were so many guests that day, and the children were even more excited. There is equipment in the hotel to record records for guests, which is rare even now. However, in the 1930s, the Chinachem Hotel was the only one of its kind. The recording equipment at that time was limited, so we could not record all the contents of the celebration. We could only record it alone in a special room on the ground floor of the building. Moreover, one record could only be recorded for 4 minutes. When we returned, we could record it on a 78-rpm hand-cranked recorder. The record player was played with a bamboo needle. According to Mr. Tang Wuji's recollection, the recording room was just to the left of the entrance to the current jazz bar. It was as small as a street phone booth. Zhou Jinjue recorded three speeches he gave at the birthday celebration, titled "Making Merits, Building Morality, and Building Words". His third daughter Zhou Shuping and seventh daughter Zhou Zhifu (Tang Wuji's mother) each recorded a song, singing a song dedicated to their father and saying a few words of blessing. The front of these records has the Chinachem Hotel's service explanation in English, which is nothing more than "Welcome to the hotel, we will provide quality service", followed by the main text. Thinking that these old records, which are only the size of modern CD discs, have brought happiness to a family for more than a century and are still preserved in the world after experiencing catastrophes, 90-year-old Zhou Zhifu cannot help but feel filled with emotion.