Tess Johnston, the American diplomat and passionate advocate for Shanghai’s colonial-era architecture, has died at age 93. Her legacy lives on through more than two dozen books, walking tours, and the preservation group Historic Shanghai, which she co-founded in 1998 .
From Diplomat to Cultural Guardian
Born in Charlotte, North Carolina, in 1931, Johnston joined the U.S. Foreign Service in 1953. Her early postings included Düsseldorf, South Vietnam, New Delhi, and Tehran. But it was her 1981 assignment to Shanghai that would define her life’s work.
“I had never been to a foreign country that looked so utterly and completely Western,” she once said of her first impressions of Shanghai .
After retiring from the State Department in 1996, she chose to remain in the city for another two decades—longer than almost any other foreign resident at the time .
Preserving a Vanishing Heritage
Johnston had no formal training in historic preservation, yet she became one of the foremost chroniclers of Shanghai’s pre-1949 architecture. Her work focused on the eclectic mix of styles left by foreign concessions: Spanish villas, Russian Orthodox churches, and iconic Art Deco buildings.
With photographer Er Dong Qiang (also known as Deke Erh), she co-authored A Last Look: Western Architecture in Old Shanghai (1993)—the first of 25 collaborative books . Their partnership helped bring global attention to a cityscape rapidly disappearing under modern development.
Key Contributions at a Glance
- Co-founded Historic Shanghai in 1998 to advocate for architectural conservation
- Published over 20 books on Shanghai’s colonial architecture and urban history
- Collected oral histories and rare artifacts (e.g., cricket cages, vintage phone books)
- Donated her extensive archives to the Hoover Institution at Stanford University
- Named Foreign Service Secretary of the Year in 1986 for coordinating President Reagan’s Shanghai visit
Shanghai Then and Now: A Visual Timeline
| Year | Milestone | Urban Context |
|---|---|---|
| 1842 | First Opium War ends; foreign concessions established | Western-style buildings begin to rise |
| 1949 | Communist Revolution | Construction halts; many buildings preserved by neglect |
| 1981 | Johnston arrives in Shanghai | Tallest building: 22 stories |
| 1998 | Historic Shanghai founded | Urban redevelopment accelerates |
| 2016 | Johnston returns to Washington, D.C. | Shanghai has 3+ skyscrapers taller than Empire State Building |
| 2025 | Johnston passes away | Over 1,000 buildings now designated as protected heritage sites |
Why Her Work Still Matters
Johnston often credited the Cultural Revolution—not despite its chaos, but because of its ideological focus—for inadvertently preserving Shanghai’s architecture. “We have the Cultural Revolution to thank for Shanghai’s preservation,” she told The Guardian in 1997. “Otherwise, we would be 25 years further down the road. There would be nothing left.”
Today, Shanghai continues to balance modernization with heritage. Recent efforts include the revitalization of the Rockbund district and stricter protections for buildings in the former French Concession . Yet, as Johnston warned in 1998: “What we learn from history is that we don’t learn from history.”
📚 Explore More
For those interested in the intersection of diplomacy and cultural preservation, read our deep dive on [INTERNAL_LINK:diplomats-as-historians].
