Settlement and the former French Concession. The city’s status as a pivotal international trading center dates to the 1840s, when self-governing foreign settlements were established after the Opium War. The disintegration of the Qing Dynasty in 1911 presaged years of civil conflict and Japanese militarism; the settlements were perceived as sanctuaries in which a cosmopolitan society could flourish and conduct business freely. Resilient immigrants, and a small but culturally progressive Chinese middle class, became the inhabitants of Art Deco homes and consumers of decorative arts.

The International Settlement is fringed by its bombastic “Bund” (an anglicized Hindi term meaning embankment), Shanghai’s best-known stretch of early 20th-century Western architecture overlooking the Huangpu River, and long the city’s public face; the stretch of buildings was designated a Modern Heritage Site by UNESCO in 2003. The city’s commercial showcase, it merged classical and Art Deco styles to symbolize the concurrent ideals of longevity and progress. Palmer and Turner, a British Hong Kong-based architectural firm with a prolific Shanghai branch founded in 1912, was favored for its fusion of neo-classicism and modernism. Technologically astute, the firm, led in Shanghai by George Leopold Wilson, demonstrated that high rises could be built on the city’s notorious foundation of mud, and created nine of the 13 buildings erected on the Bund from 1920.

The most sumptuous of these was Sassoon House (1929), 20 the Bund, a 12-story Art Deco icon built for the property and banking tycoon Sir Victor Sassoon. Anchored on a raft of concrete and wood, its sleek verticality is emphasized by narrow windows, masonry ribbons and a stepped tower capped by a steeply pitched roof, lending it the appearance of “an Art Deco rocket ship,” as Shanghai architectural historian Peter Hibbard aptly puts it. Its interior was lavishly studded with Lalique glass and still retains some of its original plasterwork, ironwork and fittings. Now the north wing of the Peace Hotel, it is still a pivotal building: its new joint Chinese and North American management plans an historically sensitive renovation designed by HBA/HirschBedner Associates, that could play an inspirational role in the city’s preservation agenda.

Palmer and Turner, in partnership with British-trained Chinese architect H.S. Luke, also designed the building next door at 23 the Bund, for the Bank of China (1937–40s). A substantial granite-faced building, it is a hybrid Art Deco skyscraper cum Chinese temple of commerce, with Oriental-style window lattices and a blue-tiled roof with up-tilted eaves.

North of Suzhou Creek lies Palmer and Turner’s Broadway Mansions (1934), 20 North Suzhou Rd. On its completion, this monumental pyramid was one of Shanghai’s two tallest buildings. Part hotel, part apartment block, it also catered to that fixture of Shanghai economic life during the Concession period — the young, single expatriate — with its 99 stylish and compact bachelor pads.

Another of Palmer and Turner’s giant apartment projects was the Embankment Building (1933), 340 North Suzhou Rd., stretching for a quarter mile along Suzhou Creek. Built for Victor Sassoon, it was admired as “one of the coolest places of residence in Shanghai in summer,” and seems on the verge of regaining both climatic and colloquial