Shanghai's boom years between the two world wars coincided with the height of Art Deco, and the city absorbed the style with enthusiasm. Banks, department stores, cinemas, apartment blocks and factories built in the 1920s and 1930s carry its signatures - stepped setbacks, vertical fins, geometric ornament, rounded corners, and a taste for eagle, sunburst and chevron motifs - and enough survives that you can walk a whole day without leaving the period.
Where to walk
Start on the Bund, where the bank headquarters of the 1920s and 1930s line the waterfront: look for stepped corner towers, giant order columns and bronze doors, and for the way each building runs its own vertical lines up the facade. From there, move inland. The former International Settlement and French Concession preserve apartment blocks with rounded balconies and tiled stairwells, the great cinemas of the period, and a scatter of industrial buildings converted to offices. Streets around the Bund and in the French Concession district repay slow walking rather than a list of addresses.
What to look for
Three details identify the style quickly. First, the setback: buildings that step back as they rise, a form driven by New York zoning that Shanghai designers adopted for the silhouette. Second, verticality: narrow fins or bands running up the facade to draw the eye upward. Third, ornament that is abstract rather than classical - chevrons, zigzags, stepped patterns, and Chinese motifs reworked into geometric form, which is the local variation you will not see in New York.
Practical notes
The Bund is walkable from the East Nanjing Road metro stop, and the whole route is flat. Most buildings are working banks and offices and cannot be entered; the exceptions are the ones operating as hotels, which will usually let you look at the lobby. Late afternoon light is best for the facades facing west, and the crowds thinnest before nine in the morning. A camera with a tilt-shift or a phone with a wide lens handles the narrow streets better than a standard lens. Combine the walk with the Bund's riverside promenade in the evening.
