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Shanghai History Museum occupies Shanghai Race Club. The Shanghai Race Club was founded in 1850. It changed location three times. In 1860, the property was sold again. The owners bought a piece of land triple its former size and constructed the third racecourse, commonly known as the Shanghai Racecourse.
The third racecourse had two tracks: one turf track and one hard track. The outer turf track, around 2,000 metres long, was used for horse racing; and the inner clay track and the large field inside once hosted a series of facilities, including swimming pool, cricket pitch, golf course and football field.
The Shanghai Racecourse held horse races and lotteries every year, so some board members suggested erecting a building inside the Shanghai Racecourse for an exclusive club. In 1932, the club spent two million taels of silver in constructing a building at the north-western corner of the Shanghai Racecourse. It covered an area of 890 square meters with a floor area of 2,100 square meters, standing four floors tall. It was in the classic style with a touch of eclecticism. The facade was covered with a combination of brown face bricks and stone blocks, and Tuscan columns spanned the western facades of its second and third floors. At its north-western corner was a 53.3-meter-high bell tower topped by a pyramid-shaped slope roof. Between the roof and the bell was the observatory. The first floor and the second floor were connected to the grandstand, and club members would watch the races from the corridor on the third floor. The ticket office and the prize-collecting office were on the ground floor. The mezzanine between the first and second floors was used as a bowling alley; the second floor as a members' club, complete with a cafe, a game room, a billiard room, a reading room, etc.; the third floor as VIP rooms and restaurants; and the fourth floor as staff quarters. In 1925, 1930 and 1935, respectively, the club built twostorey houses of early modern British style with red bricks, which extended all the way to the intersection of Race Course Road (now Wusheng Road), on the south of the original building.
After Shanghai was liberated in1949, it was rebuilt into People's Park and People's Square. In 1952, the building of the Shanghai Race Club was used as the Shanghai Museum and Shanghai Library. The two organizations moved out in succession, and the building became the Shanghai Art Museum. Now it has been transformed into the Shanghai History Museum and the Shanghai Revolution Museum, which officially opened to the public from March 2018.