The Sassoon House at the north end of the Bund, completed in 1929 and now the Fairmont Peace Hotel, is the most architecturally distinctive building on the waterfront — an Art Deco pyramid tower in green copper, built by Elias David Sassoon as the centre of his Shanghai trading empire. The hotel was where Noël Coward wrote Private Lives in 1930.
The hotel is operating and the lobby and jazz bar are accessible to non-guests. The Peace Hotel Jazz Bar runs nightly sets performed by the same house band that has been playing since the 1980s — older musicians playing 1930s Shanghai jazz in the original ballroom. Drinks are expensive; the music and room are worth the cost if you are interested in Shanghai's golden era atmosphere. The Bund at Nanjing Road East.