financial clout. As local architectural preservationist Spencer Dodington remarks, “Preservation is the friend of tourism.”
Meanwhile, Shanghai’s 21st-century icons gesture to their predecessors. The city’s newest “Art Deco rocket ship” is John Portman and Associates’ thrusting Tomorrow Square (2003), a mixed-use development housing the luxurious JW Marriott Hotel.
Shanghai was a wealthy and prodigal city in the 1920s and 1930s; happily, a groundswell of support for preserving the Art Deco heritage of this period is beginning to influence the city’s vaunted modernization.

Fiona Lindsay Shen is a design historian based in Shanghai with a special interest in historic preservation.
Photographer Deke Erh is the recipient of numerous awards, including one from the American Institute of Architects.
Special thanks to Tess Johnston for her guidance on Shanghai’s Art Deco history.