24. November 2023

The Astor House Hotel was once the oldest and most reputable establishment in Shanghai, but in 1910 an unthinkable crime occurred at one of the most famous hotels of the world, that almost tarnished its reputation forever. Items acquired by us in the USA help solve the century-old mystery...

05. July 2023

This lovely ca. 1935 advertising booklet for the Astor House Hotel from our collection has a centerfold map & offers the perfect opportunity to take you on a journey through old Tianjin, the second biggest foreign settlement of Republican China. Tianjin, or Tientsin as it was once called, is located 140km South-East of Beijing on the shore of the Bohai sea and its Chinese name translates to "Heavenly Ford" or "Ford of Heaven". After the end of the Second Opium War in 1858 the Treaty of...

28. October 2022

This large 1932 map of Shanghai was produced by Millington Inc., one of the “Big 4” advertising agencies of old Shanghai. It was issued in the same year when Millington also started to produce the monthly “The Cathay” hotel magazine and features almost the same advertisers. The map was a supplement to the “City Directory of Shanghai”, a publication issued by Millington and which complemented the “Rosenstock’s Business Directory of China” which the agency also produced annually...

19. September 2021

Manufactured by US company Otis and installed in 1924 at the Tientsin Astor House Hotel, when an additional building was joined to the original structure built in 1863. Otis was distributed in China by their agent American Trading Company until in 1930 the company established it's own office, located in the Shanghai Sassoon House.