Tour Report: Inside Marble Hall, The Kadoorie Mansion

Old Shanghai was a city full of exquisite mansions, yet even so, Elly Kadoorie’s Marble Hall was considered the most beautiful of all. On Saturday, August 5, Historic Shanghai visited this jewel. Here’s the story.

“It is palatial ….built on a lavish scale, yet not ostentatious.”

– North-China Herald, March 22, 1924

An Accident of History

Marble Hall is an accident of history. It wasn’t meant to be the Kadoorie home – instead, it was supposed to be reconstruction of a new Jewish Country Club. But then things went awry…

Young Elazear (‘Elly’) Silas Kadoorie, from a Sephardic Jewish family in Baghdad, arrived in Shanghai in the 1880 to work for E.D. Sassoon–the Sassoons were distant cousins– before striking out on his own as a stockbroker. He married well: wife Laura Mocatta came from a very old, very wealthy Sephardic Jewish family, well-known for their philanthropy, and Laura herself was said to be the most liberated woman in Shanghai, driving motorcars, shooting, and agitating for men’s clubs to open their ranks to women.

Sir Elly and Lady Laura Kadoorie

Elly’s business grew and prospered in Shanghai, Hong Kong, and London. He invested in real estate, and in a company that would become the Hong Kong and Shanghai Hotels. Seeing the growth potential in Shanghai, he purchased a home on the eastern part of Bubbling Well Road, just opposite Cecile Court, the home of their great friends the McBains. (Today, Nanjing West Road / Westgate Mall).

The three-storey McBain home, built in 1906 on 10 acres of land was legendary. Even more so after the family sold it to the Kadoorie-owned Hong Kong and Shanghai Hotels and it was converted into the Majestic Hotel. As the Majestic, it was the ne plus ultra of hotels, with the city’s grandest ballroom, the place where Soong Mei Ling and Chiang kai-Shek wed.

The Kadoorie home suffered a different fate.

The Majestic Hotel, converted from the McBain mansion, across Bubbling Well Road from the Kadoorie home.

A Season of Fires

In February 1919, tragedy struck: Elly’s beloved Laura lost her life in a fire that tore through the house, racing back inside to rescue the governess. Bereft, Elly and their sons Lawrence and Horace buried Laura in the Jewish Cemetery on Bubbling Well Road, and left for London, where the boys were in school.

Eleazar Silas Kadoorie (middle) with sons Lawrence (right) and Horace (left).

It was, as it turns out, a season of fires, Barely a year later, in May 1920, another fire destroyed the upper floors of the newly opened Jewish Country Club, designed by Spanish architect Abelardo Lafuente and his partner Gerald Wootten. (Several years later, Elly would hire Lafuente and Wootten again for the Majestic.)

Elly had been the driving force behind the construction of this club for the Sephardic Jewish community, purchasing 20 mou of land on the western edge of Bubbling Well Road, and he committed to rebuilding it. For the reconstruction, he hired the firm of Graham-Brown & Wingrove. Alexander Graham-Brown and George Christopher Wingrove were well-respected architects who had worked on projects like the posh Shanghai Club.

So what came next is somewhat of a surprise.

Far Fetched Claims

Odd telegrams began arriving in London from Graham-Brown. Lawrence Kadoorie recounted the saga to author Harriet Sergeant in Shanghai: Collision Point of Cultures, 1918-1939:

“Want to raise the ballroom roof 15 feet,” said one missive. Teensy problem: there was no ballroom in the plans.

In an oft-reported quote from Sergeant’s interview with Lawrence, the family returned from England to find:

“Enraged contractors, the architect an alcoholic in hospital with DT’s and a ballroom 65 feet high, 80 feet long and 50 feet wide, lit by 3,600 different-colored electric light bulbs.”

-Lawrence Kadoorie, as quoted by Harriet Sergeant

The Marble Hall Ballroom, no longer lit with 3,600 colored lightbulbs (more’s the pity!)

Is it really possible that Elly – the sharp businessman – paid no attention to what was going on with the rebuilding of the Jewish Club? The whole is idea is “far fetched,” says Jonathan Kaufman, in his book Last Kings of Shanghai.

Did the Kadoories decide midway through the rebuild to make it their home, and decided to blame the sheer grandeur of the place on a drunken architect? Despite Lawrence’s protestations to Sergeant that Graham-Brown never finished the house and that another architect had to complete it, Graham-Brown and Wingrove are listed as the architects in a 1924 North China Herald article.

Guests entered a spacious main hall, with a beautiful coffered ceiling

From Country Club to Kadoorie Mansion

Whether the Graham-Brown & Wingrove fantasy palace was created for the Kadoories and with their assent or not, it was simply too grand for the Jewish Country Club–but not too grand for the Kadoories. The newspapers said as much:

“The original idea was that it should be a Jewish Country Club, but as the work progressed it was obvious that everything had been planned on too large a scale for the needs of that section of the community and so Mr. Kadoorie has taken the place for his own residence.”

North China Herald, March 1924

And so Marble Hall was built on the bones of the Jewish Country Club, named for the 150 tons of marble used both in the interior and the sculptures by Italian sculptor G. Finnochario.

The new Jewish Country Club never did get built, and perhaps to take the sting out, Elly committed to lending out the entire house and grounds to any charitable cause, promising to defray all expenses: “Munificent Offer for the Assistance of Shanghai Charities,” trumpeted the North China Herald.

All the Modern Conveniences

The house was outfitted with every modern convenience imaginable for 1924: electric lighting—including the aforementioned multi-colored lightbulbs in the ballroom—and chandeliers; air-conditioning; a ‘Magicoal’ electric fireplace, even a refrigeration room that still stands near the dining room. In the basement, the Kadoorie boys could work out in the miniature gymnasium, or take one of the horses from the stables for a ride.

One of the great delights of seeing Marble Hall today is to see some of these artefacts, carefully preserved: the marble urns in their niches. The old state-of-the-art refrigeration room. The Kadoorie family dining table, around which over 50 guests could be seated. The old barbecue grill. An original laundry sink. Even original old urinals in the men’s bathroom!

From left: the “refrigerating room of vast dimensions”; original urinal; and barbecue grill.

Japanese Occupation at Marble Hall

During the Japanese occupation of Shanghai, Marble Hall was taken by the Japanese. As British citizens, the Kadoories were interned–first at Stanley Camp in Hong Kong, but as Sir Elly became ill, the family requested a return to Marble Hall. The Japanese acquiesced, but only partially: Sir Elly and his son Horace were put up in a room above the Marble Hall stables, while Lawrence, his wife Muriel, and their babies Michael and Rita were sent to Chapei Internment Camp.

Sir Elly died in 1944, in that room above the stables, and was buried with Laura. At war’s end, in 1945, the Kadoories moved back to Marble Hall, where they hosted a delegation of American soldiers in one wing, and the British Air Force in another.

Palatial Marble Hall Becomes the Children’s Palace

In the late 1940s, Lawrence was based in Hong Kong, and Horace in Shanghai. In 1948, Horace came to Hong Kong for a visit, but though he expected to return, he never did. The Kadoories never wanted to give up Marble Hall – it was their home, and, as Lawrence said, “it was quite a house.” But their former managers and servants got word to them that things had changed dramatically. Soong Ching Ling, a family friend of the Kadoories for three decades, sent a representative to request Marble Hall for the use of the Children’s Welfare Fund.

Soong Ching Ling, founder of the Children’s Palace, pictured here in the Adam Drawing Room

In 1953, the Kadoories acquiesced, and Marble Hall has been the Municipal Children’s Palace for after-school activities ever since, the very first in China. Today, little girls practice ballet in the dignified Steward-style dining room; a choir rehearses in the Jacobean billiards room; and upstairs, children paint in one of the twelve bedrooms.

Marble Hall hasn’t been the Kadoorie family home for over 70 years, but there’s still a link. Sir Michael Kadoorie, Sir Elly’s grandson, comes to visit whenever he’s in town. The Hong Kong-based head of the family companies, which includes the Peninsula Hotel group, lived here as a little boy after he was released from Chapei Camp, and delights in pointing out the terrace where he rode his tricycle as a four-year-old, and his special place at the family dining table that could seat 50 people.

Historic Shanghai team photo around the Kadoorie dining table

With special thanks to the Municipal Children’s Palace for arranging our visit!

SOURCES

Hibbard, Peter. Beyond Hospitality: The History of the Hongkong and Shanghai Hotels, Limited (Marshall Cavendish, 2010).

Kaufman, Jonathan. Last Kings of Shanghai: The Rival Jewish Dynasties That Helped Create Modern China. (Viking, 2020).

Sergeant, Harriet. Shanghai: Collision Point of Cultures, 1918/1939 (New York: Crown, 1990).

“A Jewish Club for Shanghai: To Be Opened Early 1920”. The Shanghai Times, December 15, 1919, accessed July 26 2023.

“Fire at Jewish Club: Incendiarism Suspected”. The North-China Herald, May 8 1920, accessed July 26, 2023

“The Stately Homes of Shanghai: Mr. E.S. Kadoorie’s Beautiful House: An Artistic Architectural Gem: Transformation of the Jewish Club: Munificent Offer for the Assistance of Shanghai Charities.” The North-China Herald, March 22 1924, accessed July 26, 2023.