The Park Hotel, known in Chinese as Guoji Fandian, or the International Hotel, was completed in December of 1934. Its completion had initially been scheduled to mark the 10th anniversary, in 1933, of the founding of the Joint Savings Society, a consortium of Chinese banks, whose headquarters Hudec had built several years earlier. The idea of building a skyscraper for the Joint Savings Society may have been conceived as early as 1927. In 1927-28, Hudec travelled to Europe and the United States, learning about new technologies in steel and soil engineering and sketching the new tall buildings rapidly inhabiting American cities. In addition, in 1927 he had tested the soil resistance (finding it insufficient for a tall building) across the street from the present location of his 1928 Joint Savings Society headquarters building, presumably at the time of planning the home of the JSS, which was completed in 1928. The hotel was a major investment for the JSS bank, and housed a bank with vaults in the basement as well as the newly-formed China Travel Service.
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Opening ad and the Park Hotel from the east, down Nanjing Lu in 2001. |
 The Joint Savings Society's logo is the Chinese junk with a star just off the top of the mast. It features in the opening ad banner, above. Prior to mid-1934, the hotel had been referred to as the Joint Savings Society Building, but its name then changed to the Park Hotel.
The logo is also today attached to the granite facing on the building's facade,
above a plaque announcing the hotel's heritage status. |
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The Park Hotel in 2001, with a section of the back, drawn in Hudec's hand, that was published in a German newspaper.
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| Entrance of the hotel, 2001. |
| Hudec was very proud of this building, and rightfully so. It was the tallest building in China when it was built and remained the tallest in Shanghai until the 1980s. | |
These two views show the hotel's setting in the early 1930s. These photos appeared in a brochure celebrating the hotel's opening, but clearly the hotel was not finished when the brochure was made (probably meant to correspond with the JSS's tenth anniversary in 1933). The top photo montage includes drawing of the hotel on top of a photo of the racecourse. The lower photo, taken from the hotel's location, shows Hudec's Moore Memorial Church (1928).
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Now, of course, it is completely overshadowed by the mega skyscrapers that clutter the city's airspace. | |