Shanghai’s Little White House

They call it the “Little White House,” and it was one of the finest grand mansions of old Shanghai. Still is. Constructed by a company whose buildings would become icons, this gracious belle époque mansion on Fenyang Lu never housed Presidents, but for nearly half a century after it was built, it was the home of men who defined their era.

Completed in 1919, it was originally the residence of silk merchant Henri Madier and his brother Joseph. The Madier brothers and their business partner Adolphe Ribet owned Shanghai’s leading silk trading company, Madier et Ribet. Headquartered in Lyon, the company had branches in Guangzhou and Yokohama, with Shanghai as its Asia headquarters.[1] Madier et Ribet was immensely successful, but Madier didn’t actually own this sumptuous villa.

The House Built by Savings

The little White House was the property of the International Savings Society (ISS), one of China’s first commercial savings societies, of which Madier was a partner. Founded in 1912 by fellow Frenchmen René Fano and Jean Beudin, the ISS offered 15-year bonds with annual interest. Bond bearers paid just $12 a month; half-vouchers for $6 and quarter-vouchers for $3 were also available. But what drew savers was its monthly lottery: each month, the winner of the lottery would receive their full redemption amount ahead of the maturity date; partial redemption prizes were also given.

The well-capitalized firm invested its deposits in various instruments, most significantly, in land and the construction of investment properties.[2] In 1920, the ISS formed the property company Foncière et Immobilière de Chine (FONCIM). Designed by some of the finest architects of the age, its buildings guaranteed the company’s assets and would become Shanghai legends: the Normandie, the Picardie, the Savoy, the Bearne, the Dauphine, the Gascogne, and more.[3]

But in 1918, when the Little White House was being planned, all that was in the future. Madier’s house was one of the luxury villas the ISS built to rent out to its senior management, a clever strategy designed to offset dividend payments and salaries.

The ISS hired the American architectural firm R.A. Curry for this project (perhaps it was the American influence that inspired the White House resemblance?). Fortuitously, Rowland Curry had taken on a young, talented Hungarian architect as draftsman and designer that very year.

Trained at the Royal University of Budapest, Laszlo Hudec had arrived in Shanghai in late 1918 after a dramatic escape from a Siberian prison camp. In working on the Little White House, the talent that would make him one of old Shanghai’s most sought-after architects (and a modern Shanghai icon) was already evident.

LITTLE WHITE HOUSE RESIDENTS

The Taipan

Although Henri Madier didn’t own the building, it was built for him and the glamorous lifestyle of an early 20^th century Shanghai taipan during the heyday of the French Concession. As the taipan of one of the French Concession’s most prominent companies and the President of the Cercle Sportif Français (French Club), Madier would have entertained often, and on a grand scale.

Downstairs, grand rooms flow easily into one another, each one different from the next. It’s easy to imagine soirées in these rooms: guests mounting the exterior curved staircase for a grand candlelit dinner laid out in the main room, surrounded by rich wood paneling and marble fireplaces, or a reception on the vast lawn. A dramatic sweeping staircase floats upwards, to the much simpler second-storey bedrooms, and downwards, to the basement hive of kitchens and servants.

The Japanese Ambassador

In 1936, Japan’s influence was growing: Manchuria (‘Manchukuo’) had been occupied since 1931, and the Second Sino-Japanese War, which would see the Chinese sections of Shanghai occupied, was just a year away. That year, the Little White House on Route Pichon had a new occupant, a reflection of the changing landscape: Hachirō Arita, Japanese Ambassador. [4] Arita is credited with conceptualizing the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, an Asian economic and military bloc to counter Western colonization. It was the ideology that provided the raison d’etre for Japan’s occupation of China and Southeast Asia.

The Madier brothers were still in Shanghai in 1936, but perhaps the ISS thought that in the current climate it was a good strategic move to have Japan’s top diplomat resident in the house. Arita didn’t live there for long, though: in March, he became Japan’s Foreign Minister.

The General

Following the end of the war in 1945, the house became the first office of the World Health Organization, Asia-Pacific region. More changes came with the 1949 Communist victory: the house was briefly the home of the Shanghai branch of the Sino-Soviet Friendship Association, then China’s most important bilateral relationship, before becoming the home of Shanghai’s first Communist-era mayor, Marshal Chen Yi. It was a fitting reward for Chen, the general who led his troops down the Bund in May 1949 to liberate Shanghai. Like many of the Communist leaders of that era, Chen had been a student in Paris, and, as Tess Johnston says in Frenchtown, he would’ve felt right at home here.

Codename: 571

Chen left Shanghai in 1958 to take up the post of Foreign Minister in Beijing, and soon thereafter, the building became the Arts & Crafts Research Institute. But in 1966, at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, the institute was ousted, and the mansion was occupied by Lin Liguo, a high-ranking People’s Liberation Army officer and the son of Marshal Lin Biao. The elder Lin was a gifted military strategist and Mao’s designated successor; from 1966 until his death in 1971 he served concurrently as Vice Premier, Vice Chairman, and Minister for National Defense. Lin Liguo was said to have been at the helm of a plot to assassinate Mao in Shanghai, codenamed Project 571. The details continue to be a matter of speculation, as do the deaths of Liguo and his parents, who died while fleeing China when their plane crashed over Mongolia in September 1971.

Following the Lin Biao Incident, the Arts & Crafts Research Institute re-occupied the building, and in 2001, it became a museum. The rooms built for a taipan now display the art and craft of China: wood and jade carving, embroidery, paper-cutting, with artisans on hand to demonstrate their skill.

There’s Shanghai history, here, too: some of the crafts on display were first taught to Chinese students by the Jesuits at their Tushanwan Orphanage, renowned as the cradle of western art in China. After 1949, the Tushanwan graduates simply moved from religious themes to Communist ones, but you can still see the occasional Virgin Mary among the displays.

The finest craft on display, however, remains the building itself. Cared for over the years, but not over-renovated, it remains in surprisingly original condition. It’s a rare example in Shanghai of a grand old mansion that looked much as it did when it was built, its history palpable, the ghosts of all its past occupants still in the house.

Shanghai Arts & Crafts Museum, 79 Fenyang Lu

Hours: Tuesday-Sunday, 9am-11.30am (last ticket: 11am); 1pm-4pm (last ticket: 3.30pm) – hours may change with COVID restrictions, so please check before you go.

Tel: 64372509; 64157072

Tickets: RMB 8

Bookings: Online, by scanning the app below.

What to bring: Passport, green code