1. When the Normandie was the Anti-Revisionist Tower

Hudec’s Normandie apartments were a triple threat: built by a foreigner for foreigners, owned by the daughter of Nationalist Finance Minister H.H. Kung, and home to a host of film stars. A building so obviously “black”  (too bourgeois for the Communist Party) had to be re-named during the Cultural Revolution: thus it became the Anti-Revisionist Tower. Sadly, it was also known as “The Diving Board”, for all those who “dove” to their deaths from here during those difficult years.

2. The Apartments Named for a Nazi Collaborationist

The Petain Apartments were named for Philippe Petain, or Marshal Petain, a French World War I hero and the head of the Vichy Government – France’s wartime Nazi collaborationist government. Hengshan Road was also Avenue Petain. Bit like having an Avenue Hitler …

3. Love Nest at the Lincoln

Speaking of collaborationists, the oldsters in the neighborhood love to gossip about the time that an official in the wartime Japanese puppet regime kept his mistress in a Lincoln apartment. Zhou Fohai was the “mayor of Shanghai” in the Wang Jingwei “Reorganized National Government of China” and maintained his mistress, actress/singer Xiao Linghong in a Lincoln apartment love nest. Then the wife found out, Japan lost the war, and it all went to pieces …

4. American Apartments in the French Concession

So what’s with all the French Concession apartments named for Americans? In a small radius, you’ll find the Washington, named for America’s first president,  the Lincoln, named for America’s civil war president, and the Pershing, named for  Word War I military hero John “Black Jack” Pershing, for whom a ballistic missile is also named. (We’re not sure if Robert Fan’s Georgia is named for the American state or the Russian one…)

5. Into Thin Air: The An Art Deco Architect Disappears

Alexandre Leonard, mostly with partners Paul Veysseyre & Arthur Kruze, designed a host of Art Deco buildings in Shanghai – and then he disappeared, without a trace. The Midget, the Willow, the Magy, the Gascogne … and that’s just the apartment houses. The Amyron, his final work in Shanghai, was solo, after Veysseyre & Kruze had left for other opportunities. That same year, the Vichy regime was installed in Shanghai, and Leonard and his archives disappeared. The mystery has never been solved…