Tina Kanagaratnam/Shanghai Daily news

The Cercle Sportif Francais had lawn tennis, swimming pool and one of the loveliest ballrooms in the city. Tina Kanagaratnam rediscovers Shanghai's most cosmopolitan club.

The neoclassical Cercle Sportif Francais (the French Club) is now part of the Okura Garden Hotel Shanghai on Maoming Road S.— Shen Kai

 

Left: An exquisite ceiling lamp. Right: The art-deco lobby features polished white marble columns. — Shen Kai

It was the most cosmopolitan club in a city that was perhaps the most cosmopolitan in the world. The sweeping neoclassical clubhouse, with its colonnaded second floor and baroque flourishes, was one of the loveliest clubs in a city where even the plebeian YMCA was designed by a major architect.
Today, the Cercle Sportif Francais (the French Club), now part of the Okura Garden Hotel, still sparkles.
Clubs were a mainstay in pre-1949 Shanghai. And it wasn't just the British who clubbed. "There are so many clubs of so many different nationalities that there is no reason that the visitor should not make friendly contacts," declared the 1934 guidebook, "All About Shanghai." In addition to the elite Shanghai Club, there was also the American Club, the Columbia Country Club, the German Garden Club and the Masonic Club - and, of course, the French Club.
Shanghai had begun to boom in the 1920s - by 1930, she would be the fifth-largest city in the world - and the influx of expatriates meant that the French quickly outgrew the original French Club building on Nanchang Road.
By the mid-1920s, the decision had been made to construct a new building, not far away on Route Cardinal Mercier (today's Maoming Road). At that time, the area was a barren swath (residential development had not quite yet made its way this far west) that was ideal for a country club.
Even in 1928, when Victor Sassoon built the Cathay Mansions, most people thought he had made a mistake: The area around Route Cardinal Mercier was a backwater, unlikely to attract any residents at all.
As usual, they underestimated Sir Victor. Today, it is difficult to imagine an area more pulsing with life, day or night, than the stretch of Maoming Road that lies between Huaihai and Changle Roads.
Sassoon's apartment buildings became popular with the smart set, due in no small part to their fortuitous location next to the French Club.
The club, which opened in 1926, was one of the most luxurious of its time.  There was an indoor swimming pool, a bowling alley, billiards and 20 lawn tennis courts. It still has its expansive green lawn, which lends a lovely country-club air to the place, but the tennis courts are gone and the facade, too, has changed, albeit only slightly.
The pair of symmetrical-domed pavilions on the rooftop, where open-air dances were once held, is gone from the roof - but one of them can be found in the heart of the garden, where it does double duty as a backdrop for bridal couples. (The rooftop bar, now called Ye Lai Xiang, still has its old band shell, and makes a wonderful place to contemplate the club's garden.)
Tess Johnston, a Shanghai historian, recalls in her book "Last Look: Western Architecture in Old Shanghai" that when she first arrived in 1981, "One could still have drinks on the terrace overlooking the fountains and stroll through the wasteland of the former tennis courts."
Its faded glory is still there in its paneled reading room, its sprung ballroom floor, its foyer filled with potted palms and its billiards room with the original green baize-covered tables.
The club she describes was one of the most avant-garde of its day: Unlike its British and American brethren, it actually admitted women, even though the number was limited to 40. In an equally liberal move, the club also admitted Chinese.
"The French Club's special concept of hospitality, which included accepting Chinese members - only the rich and powerful, of course - made the French Club the most popular foreign club in town at that time," says Sun Shufen in his book "The Last Dreams of Old Shanghai."
By 1939, the Japanese had occupied the city, and the French Club as well.  With France's defeat, the US Army moved in, and used the club until Liberation in 1949. After that, it was opened to the public as the People's Cultural Palace, and was also used by late Chairman Mao Zedong as a guesthouse during his visits to Shanghai.
By 1981, historian Johnston reports that it was the Jinjiang Club, and the swimming pool and bowling alley made it favorites of the foreigners who lived there at the time. In 1985, Nomura Securities purchased the original building from the Shanghai Jinjiang Group and built a new tower behind it; Jinjiang retains the land rights, however.
Although the renovation stripped much of what was the old Cercle Sportif, there are still corners of the old club that peek through the slick new marble. For a real feel of the grandeur of the Cercle Sportif, skip the main entrance and enter the building through the revolving doors on the eastern side. The opulent art-deco lobby, with its glittering gold mosaics and polished white marble columns, is still intact. There is an energy and creativity here, which, along with the opulence, are the defining elements of Shanghai style.
It is reflected in the wild art-deco mosaic in the center of the room, and the more subdued original mosaic floor, a woven pattern in gold, white and earth tones. It is reflected, too, in the gleaming, over-the-top brass staircase just off the lobby, which leads to the second floor. The staircase was imported from Paris, with newel posts featuring a deco version of the Greek horn of plenty, and topped with a "frozen fountain," a favorite art-deco motif.
The use of art-deco elements, which show up in details around the building is particularly remarkable: the L'Exposition Internationale des Arts Decoratifs et Industriels Modernes, which first defined the term "Art Deco," was held in Paris in 1925 - just one year before the Cercle Sportif opened.
There is little that survives of the first-floor dining rooms but the marble and granite fireplaces in the Business Center rooms, with their art-deco design elements. The Rose Cafe, on the ground floor, was the site of the bowling alley, fondly remembered by those who lived here in the late 1970s and 1980s for the international bowling league.
The lobby's brass staircase leads to the hotel's piece de resistance: the ballroom.
The spacious lobby outside the ballroom has dramatic columns topped with nude Grecian-like friezes. The fact that these survived the "cultural revolution" (1966-76) is due to the fact that they were hidden under plywood paneling - who hid them, or why, one can only speculate - and thus protected until they were rediscovered when the renovations began in 1985.
The legendary ballroom is a dramatic space, with its gorgeous elliptical stained-glass ceiling window and theatrical art-deco balconies, from which Club VIPs looked out upon the dance floor. The floor has been thickly carpeted, but the original sunken, sprung wood dance floor that made Shanghai's young ladies feel as if they were dancing on air is still underneath.
The heart of the old club was on this floor, in the billiards, cards, smoking and entertainment rooms. These are function rooms today, with only the art-deco plasterwork a reminder of their age.
Also on the second floor: the balcony, with its lines of columns, where Chairman Mao liked to pace, perhaps as he pondered affairs of the nation.  Slip out there for a view of the endless lawn from between the grand columns, and it's easy to see why the Cercle Sportif has been part of the lives of so many generations of Shanghai residents.