Hazelwood: The Taipan’s Retreat

The stately Butterfield & Swire taipan’s mansion — “the only gentleman’s house in Shanghai” — was designed from afar by an architect who never set foot here.

“It is known all over Shanghai as the Palace,” reported George Warren Swire when he arrived from England in 1934 to inaugurate Hazelwood, the newly-built Butterfield & Swire taipan’s mansion in the former French Concession, “and is the only gentleman’s house in the place.”

Perhaps that was true, or perhaps it was just a jab at his arch-rival Henry Keswick, the Jardine Matheson taipan, whose sumptuous Hongqiao home was said to be the catalyst for Hazelwood — because the fierce competition between these two powerful “hongs” (trading houses) on the lucrative China coast trade extended all the way to the top.