It was managed originally by "an eccentric American" octaroon,[61] Louis Ladow (died in China on 20 November 1928),[62] who had been imprisoned in Folsom Prison,[63] who subsequently built the Grand Carleton Hotel in Shanghai in 1920.

[67] About this time, the Hotel's managers wrote letters "complaining to the foreign-run Shanghai Municipal Council about "natives," "coolies" and "rickshaws" making too much noise for patrons to bear.

Upon one side of this are the offices, where the clerks and commissioners will attend promptly and courteously to every want; upon the other is a luxuriously furnished lounge, and, adjoining this, the reading, smoking, and drawing rooms.

It is lighted with hundreds of small electric lamps, whose rays are reflected by the large mirrors arranged around the walls, and when dinner is in progress, and the band is playing in the gallery, the scene is both bright and animated.

"[88] During the dinner, Taft made a significant speech on the relationship between the United States and China, and supporting the Open Door foreign policy previously advocated by John Hay.

"[90] The opening of a tram line in March 1908 over the new Garden bridge along Broadway (now Daming Lu) past the Astor House Hotel by the Shanghai British Trolley Company,[91] greatly increased both access and business.

"[101] According to Peter Hibbard, "[D]espite their architectural bravura and decorative grandeur, the formative years of both the Palace and Astor House Hotels were overshadowed by an inability to cater for the fast changing tastes of Shanghai society and her visitors".

[95] On 11 December 1913, the Astor House Hotel hosted a banquet for both the New York Giants of John McGraw and Chicago White Stockings of Charles Comiskey baseball teams, which included Christy Mathewson and Olympian Jim Thorpe, who were touring the world playing exhibition games.

The dining-room was a gorgeous scene in the evening...The room is long, and the prevailing colours buff and white: down the centre are very handsome Chinese inlaid pillars on which, during the hot months, electric fans are worked.

[122] According to one report, Ezra amassed a vast fortune estimated at from twenty to thirty million dollars primarily through the importation of opium[123] and successful real estate investment and management in early twentieth century Shanghai.

Despite some shareholder opposition, in March 1915, Captain Henry "Harry" Elrington Morton (born 12 May 1869 in Clonmel, Ireland; died 2 October 1923 in Manila)[126] a "staunch Britisher"[127] who had become a naturalised American citizen,[128] a master mariner who had first gone to sea at age 14,[129] formerly of the Royal Navy,[130] a Royal Arch freemason,[131] who "had been coming to Shanghai for twenty years",[132] was appointed managing director, with responsibility for managing Central Stores' three Shanghai hotels, including the Astor House, with a salary of $900 a month, plus board and lodging.

[159] The architect of the acquisition was James Harper Taggart (born 1885 in Castlemaine, Victoria, Australia)[164] managing director of Hongkong Hotels Limited, who was of "Lowland Scot heritage, of evidently very humble parentage",[165] who was married to "an American millionaire heiress",[166] was described as "dynamic",[156] and as "diminutive and sharp-minded".

[174] According to Peter Hibbard, The "Roaring Twenties" saw Shanghai entering a period of frenetic growth, only tamed in the late 1930s, with the old fabric of the city being torn apart in a rapacious drive towards modernisation.

Denied the benefits of extraterritoriality, and having few other resources, there was a proliferation of white slavery, brothels and street prostitution, and new nightspots on Bubbling Well Road and Avenue Edward VII[175] also reduced patronage at the more sedate tea dances at the Astor House: "For foreigners, the better cabarets offered a welcome alternative to club life and the stuffy tea dances at the Astor House Hotel ... around which the foreign colony's social life had previously revolved.

Duke indicates that for the price of one Mexican dollar (about 35 US cents), the Paul Whiteman Orchestra played the romantic dance tunes of the period, and included sandwiches, cream and cakes.

"[191] In 1929 the officers of the Royal Army Medical Corps were impressed with the standard of accommodation: "The rooms at the Astor House Hotel are very comfortable, central heating, bathroom attached, hot and cold water ad lib.

"[208] The fighting and shelling in the vicinity of the Astor House Hotel "resulted in consternation among the guests",[209] but the arrival of four American naval vessels on 1 February 1932 partially alleviated their concerns.

"[223] One of the more interesting frequent visitors to the Astor House Hotel was Mr. Mills, a gibbon, who accompanied American journalist Emily Hahn,[224] the sometime paramour of Sir Victor Sassoon, from 1935 until her departure for Hong Kong in 1941.

[224] In 1936 American artist Bertha Boynton Lum (1869–1954) was enthusiastic in her description of the Astor House Hotel: "The rooms are huge, the ceilings unbelievably high, and the baths large enough to drown" in.

[225] American Charles H. Baker, Jr., in his 1939 travelogue The Gentleman's Companion, describes the drink that caused him to miss many steamships as "a certain cognac and absinthe concoction known as The Astor House Special, native to Shanghai".

In late June 1944 the Japanese held "an elaborate ceremony at the Astor House Hotel in which the titles of six public utilities in Shanghai, including electricity, gas, waterworks, telephone, telegraph and tram service were transferred to the Nanjing Government.

[258] According to Horst Eisfelder, a German Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany, lunch at the Astor House during the American army occupancy was a real treat: "For only US 5¢ we had freshly prepared pancakes and a bottle of icy cold Coca Cola, which also cost five cents".

The fortunes of the Astor House fell into a spiral of decline, and its liveried doormen, elegantly appointed rooms and French restaurant with palm garden were soon no more than a distant and almost unimaginable memory.

The polished wooden boards creaked and shook when anyone walked, or thundered, down the passage past my door.... One drawback to living in the attic was that the bathroom I had to use was three flights of stairs down on the third floor.

[283] According to Mark O'Neill, in 1995 the Hotel faced destruction, as "much of the furniture and interior decoration was destroyed or stolen during the Cultural Revolution, while insects had eaten a large part of the wood.

During the renovations several significant discoveries were made in 2004: "Seven century-old, white marble clapboards embossed with carvings of the Egyptian Sphinx were recently found in a hotel storage room that has been sealed for decades.

"[292] Jasper Becker reported later in 2004, soon after the most recent renovation: "The oak-panelled walls and Ionic marble columns of the Astor Hotel's reception hall lend it a grandeur that war and revolution have not altered since Bertrand Russell and Bernard Shaw succumbed to Shanghai's splendid decadence.

According to an article by Mark O'Neill, "When well-heeled visitors arrive in Shanghai in 2009 and want to stay in a period hotel on the Bund, they will be able to choose between two properties of the Kadoorie family.

The properties are part of an ambitious multibillion-dollar project to turn the Bund from a street of rundown commercial buildings into a Chinese Ginza or Fifth Avenue, with upmarket hotels, restaurants, brand-name stores and expensive apartments.

And how can you not love a hotel that makes its male staff dress in spats, kilts and black tailcoats?...With its thick lacquered walls, high ceilings, wooden floorboards and winding corridors, it has a feel that's somewhere between a Victorian asylum and an English boarding school".