Moller House

French Concession


One of Shanghai’s most whimsical buildings, the Scandinavian-influenced Gothic peaks of the Moller House could double as the Munsters’ holiday home. Swedish owner and horse-racing fan Eric Moller owned the Moller Line, a shipping firm. Previously home to the Communist Youth League, the building now houses a hotel, the Hengshan Moller Villa. No photos allowed.

Fancifully perhaps, legend attests that a fortune teller warned Moller that tragedy would befall him on the house’s completion, so the tycoon dragged out its construction (until 1949). Moller clung on for a few more years before dying in a plane crash in 1954.


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