They financed some of Shanghai's finest colonial architecture, including the magnificent Children's Palace (formerly the Kadoorie estate, Marble Hall), the art deco Peace Hotel (then the Cathay Hotel) and Shanghai Mansions, a Sassoon building that was used to process, and illegally house at times, hundreds of refugees.
His Metropole Hotel, whose interior fittings still feature a Sassoon family emblem with its two greyhounds, rises at a nearby intersection -- across from its twin, Hamilton House, built by Sir Victor as a hybrid office building and high-rise apartment house.