Residential building at No. 2310 Hongqiao Road

Residential building at No. 2310 Hongqiao Road

The residential building at No. 2310 Hongqiao Road is a protected cultural heritage site of Shanghai.

Residential building at No. 2310 Hongqiao Road

Known as "Robinson Garden," it is a classic British country house with a two-story brick-and-wood hybrid structure. It was purchased in 1930 by Sassoon & Co. under the name of Dazhong Industrial Company and completed in 1932. Its builder, Sir Victor Sassoon, was a British Jewish national and one of the earliest foreign adventurers to arrive in Shanghai. In the 1930s, he was known as the "King of Real Estate" in Shanghai. Robinson Garden was once his private villa, with a construction area of 930 square meters, and is a British country-style pointed-roof garden villa.

The residential building at No. 2409 Hongqiao Road, along with the neighboring "Island Garden" (also known as Sassoon Villa) on the same road, are sister garden villas and were both residences of Victor Sassoon. It is said that Sassoon’s "Eden" Sassoon Villa (Building No. 1 of the Longbai Hotel) at No. 2409 Hongqiao Road, adjacent to a golf course, was mainly used to entertain guests, while Robinson Garden was his personal residence and the true Sassoon Garden.

In 1937, when the August 13th Incident broke out, Chinese troops were stationed at Robinson Garden. When the Pacific War began in 1941, Japanese forces occupied the concessions, and all of Sassoon's properties became the property of the Japanese puppet regime, including Robinson Garden. Due to urgent financial needs, the Japanese puppet regime sold the villa to a man named Zhao Zhimo, who later resold it to Jin Zhaohai, who in turn sold it to Shanghai Yin Feng Wool Textile Company, turning it into the private residence of the company’s owner. After 1948, in preparation for defending against the advancing People’s Liberation Army from the south, the Nationalist army requisitioned parts of the land at Robinson Garden to build bunkers and other military defense facilities. As a result, by the time of the liberation, the actual area of Robinson Garden had been reduced to just under 100 acres. In 1956, after the Yin Feng Company underwent a public-private partnership, the owner relocated the entire family to Hong Kong, and the property came under the ownership of the Shanghai Textile Bureau. It was long used as a sanatorium for textile workers. In 1989, it was listed as part of the fifth batch of cultural heritage sites protected by Shanghai.