Another City Another Age Hong Kong: The Years of Classic Elegance
Kingsclere PAGE 98
Government House PAGE 38
Club Germania PAGE 46
St John’s Cathedral PAGE 26
Colonial Secretariat
French Mission
PAGE 24
PAGE 60
Hongkong Bank Beaconsfield Arcade PAGE 68
City Hall PAGE 64
PAGE 32
Prince’s Building PAGE 102
Murray Parade Ground Murray Barracks PAGE 22
Queen’s Road PAGE 10
Statue Square Great Northern Telegraph Office
Butterfield & Swire PAGE 86
PAGE 90
New Oriental Building PAGE 92
Victoria Club
The Cenotaph Supreme Court PAGE 124
Hong Kong Club PAGE 16
Queen’s Pier
Contents Alexandra Building
100
Lapraik Clock Tower
52
Bank of China
148
Lin Fa Kung Temple
56
Beaconsfield Arcade
68
Marble Hall
66
Butterfield & Swire
86
Marine Police Headquarters
70
Central District Police Headquarters
Murray Barracks
22
58
Central Market
42
Central Praya
104
Central School
54
Chartered Bank Royal Building
Alexandra Building
PAGE 108
PAGE 100
King’s Building PAGE 106
Union Building PAGE 110
Queen’s Building PAGE 96
St George’s Building
Star Ferry Pier
44
Chinese Methodist Church
146
Chinese Quarter
80
Church Guest House
132
City Hall
64
Club Germania
46
Colonial Secretariat
24
French Mission
60
General Post Office
122
Government Civil Hospital
30
Government House
38
Great Northern Telegraph Office
90
Harbour Office
112
Headquarters House
20
Hong Kong Club
16
Hong Kong Hotel
84
Hong Kong Jockey Club
48
Hongkong Bank King’s Building Kingsclere Kom Tong Hall
32, 144 106 98 130
Kowloon-Canton Railway
118
La Salle College
142
Murray House
14
Nathan Road
114
New Oriental Building The North Shore Peak Hotel
92 154 88
Peak Tram
76
Pedder Wharf
62
Peninsula Hotel Peninsular & Oriental Co
138 72
Prince’s Building
102
Queen’s Building
96
Queen’s Road Repulse Bay Hotel
10 136
Resettlement Estates
152
Residential Accommodation
134
Roman Catholic Cathedral
74
Royal Building
108
Royal Square
140
St John’s Cathedral Supreme Court
26 124
Taikoo Dockyard
116
Union Building
110
Union Church
82
University Of Hong Kong
126
View of Central
158
Zetland Hall
36
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ueen’s Road has more than fulfilled the dreams of Victorian entrepreneurs who knew it as a narrow track along the water front. Known in 1841 as ‘Main Street,’
it became Queen’s Road, in honour of Queen Victoria on 22 March 1842. Running through the commercial heart of Hong Kong this major thoroughfare was initially lined with trees and graceful colonial architecture, an imposing clock tower and was served by sedan-chair bearers and rickshaw pullers. It became more colourful as it snaked through the trading section of the town between open-fronted shops, jostling throngs, crowded tenements and impromptu markets. This 1863 photograph on the following page shows Queen’s Road Central looking down from Battery Path. In the immediate foreground on the left is Duddell Street, also on the left are the spires of the Roman Catholic Cathedral at the junction of Pottinger and Wellington Street before being relocated to Glenealy, the Lapraik Clock Tower in the distance and the four-storied façade of Messrs Dent & Co in front of the tower.
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1842 Queen’s Road
1846 Murray House
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urray House has its origins in the mosquito-infested swamplands of Happy Valley. Fever regularly ravaged the troops stationed there, leading to the building of
a military hospital on Bowen Road, and plans to move the troops themselves. The construction of new barracks and an Officer’s Mess (as Murray House was originally designated) was therefore an urgent priority for Major Edward Aldrich RN. A site was selected, and work began on land purchased from Messrs Chater, Nelson and several Chinese owners. Using local labour, construction began in 1843 and was completed in 1846. Bricks, stone, 462 large granite columns, and timber from Manila were used to build what local newspaper Friend of China described as “magnificent quarters for the military officers and their chief”. During the Second World War Murray House was occupied by the Japanese military. The British regained control of the barracks after the war and in 1961 relinquished possession to the Government, which turned it into the Rating and Valuation Department. However, its prime location in land-hungry Hong Kong meant its days were numbered. Despite being classified a Grade 1 monument, it had to go to make way for the Bank of China Tower. Murray House, however, was methodically dismantled stone by stone in 1983 and re-erected in 1998 on an artificial promontory at Ma Hing, the fishing village of Stanley, where it has today ignominiously been downgraded to a hamburger fast food outlet.
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1897 Hong Kong Club
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Hong Kong Club continued
‘God of Bowls’. There were no fewer than four bowling alleys at ground level behind the main entrance and behind that a wine cellar and a refrigerating room fitted with the latest appliances. The first floor featured a very fine hall with Doric columns supporting the gallery. A grand teak staircase led from the first to the second floor and here again the gallery was supported by columns, which added much to the pleasing effect. Here one found a library which faced the Queen’s statue. The room was admirably suited for the purpose of quiet reading being at an appropriate distance from the main bar, the billiard room and the bowling alleys. On the third floor were eleven large bedrooms. An extraordinary general meeting in 1980 saw membership divided on the question of whether to preserve or demolish the venerable building. The pro-demolitionists won the day and the Hong Kong Club building (left) was vacated and torn down in 1981.
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1886 Hongkong Bank
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N
o bank has been so closely allied to the fortunes of the city as the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation.
From its inception, the bank has occupied the premises at 1 Queen’s Road Central, which once stood on the waterfront in what was then Wardley House. Formed soon after the establishment of the colony by a consortium of local merchants, this locally-based bank was able to respond to the particular needs of the China trade hongs. The commission to design the second of the bank’s four buildings was won by Wilberforce Wilson, a civil engineer and former SurveyorGeneral of Hong Kong, Sotheby Godfrey Bird, a Royal Engineer, and a young English architect named Clement Palmer. This early association led to the founding of the firm of architects Messrs Palmer & Turner, practising today under the name P&T Architects and Engineers.
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1886 Hongkong Bank
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Hongkong Bank continued
The 1886 building of brick faced with granite, topped with a massive octagonal dome took four years to build. Its main Queen’s Road frontage was dominated by an imposing portico flanked by granite Corinthian columns. The Des Voeux Road entrance presented a more familiar façade with wide arched verandahs. Indoors, one side of the banking hall was devoted to the counters of the European general office where business in English was conducted. On the opposite side was the comprador’s section where transactions in Chinese took place. The top floors were given over to a mess for unmarried clerks from England. All rooms had hot and cold running water, gas lighting was installed throughout, all offices and rooms had electric bells and the bank also had an electricdriven lift. A dining, drawing and billiard room for senior staff overlooked the Praya.
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y the turn of the twentieth century the city of Victoria had developed a graceful and highly functional, form of architecture – however muddled its design origins. The best
solution to the heat of the long hot summers was colonnaded structures with wide verandahs, which gave access to the outside air with through drafts at all levels. At ground level, covered walkways afforded shelter from the sun and monsoon rains. The introduction of electricity in 1890 brought an improvement with the installation of revolving fans from office ceilings. Incorporating these modern developments, the stately Queen’s Building, four storeys tall with sixteen suites of offices and four turreted corners, became the city’s most prestigious building. Designed by the architects Leigh & Orange for the Central Estate Company, it was completed in 1899. In 1923 the Central Estate Company’s assets were absorbed by the Hongkong Land Company through an exchange of shares. With the remarkable expansion of Hong Kong as a tourist mecca after the war, part of a worldwide phenomenon, its owners decided in 1959 to take the old Queen’s Building out of its office development programme. Instead, they opted to build a prestigious five-star hotel – to be called The Queen’s – on the site. In the end, the Mandarin Hotel opened its doors to the burgeoning tourist industry in 1963.
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1899 Queen’s Building
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n 1927, Hongkong Land purchased Prince’s Building, landward to the south of Queen’s Building (which it already owned), from J.E. Joseph and his younger brother
F.A. Joseph. It acquired the property for $3 million, making it ‘a very good buy’ even in those days, resulting in the brothers being appointed to the company’s Board of Directors. Prince’s Building stood four storeys high in a prestigious location and was designed in the grand imperial manner, with porticoes, balconies, arches and cupolas it was intended for office and commercial use. With the upsurge of affluence in Hong Kong and elsewhere in Asia in the 1960s, Hongkong Land was under pressure to fulfil demand for prestigious office accommodations. The building was demolished, redeveloped and opened under the same name in April 1965. Linked by the first pedestrian bridge over a Central District street to the Mandarin Hotel, which preceded it by two years, the new Prince’s Building is vastly taller and less elaborately embellished than its predecessor.
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1904 Prince’s Building
1930s Royal Square
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nspired by the success of its landmark headquarters built on the Bund in Shanghai, Vandaleur Grayburn, the bank’s Hong Kong manager, decided it was time to replace the 1886 building, which was beginning to show its age in the 1930s. As with the
previous building the design for the new headquarters was awarded to Palmer and Turner with the instruction to build “the best bank in the world”. Since the site had been extended through the acquisition of the old City Hall next door in 1933, work commenced immediately. As the building was designed to make elegant use of stone and marble, the Bank purchased a quarry and brickworks to ensure an uninterrupted supply of materials. The new headquarters took two years to complete and instantly attracted world attention at its opening on 17 October 1935. Until the 1930s, Hong Kong was still a squat colonial city, on the surface indistinguishable from British colonies elsewhere. Singapore, Penang, Calcutta evolved according to a familiar colonial pattern. Here most buildings rose no higher than four floors, and were colonnaded with wide verandahs, high ceilings and overhead fans. The Bank’s new headquarters, however, stood 220 feet high and towered above the city. It was the tallest building in Asia. The monolithic granite façade was a masterpiece of art-deco design. Symbolic granite heads, the Men of Vision, decorated the main exterior walls. The Queen’s Road entrance was topped by a portcullis and guarded by great bronze doors. The curved mosaic ceiling, impressive in height and detail, portrayed merchants and workers of all races engrossed in symbolic labour. Its interior walls and columns were finished in imported green, cream and black marble and the building was fully air conditioned – a rarity in Asia. Guarded by a pair of polished bronze lions the whole combined to give an aura of great financial authority.
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1935 Hongkong Bank
The passing years leave few traces on the face of Hong Kong. Without the surviving photographic record – much of it recaptured in the pages of this splendidly illustrated volume – there would be little to remind us of the very different Hong Kong which served as prelude to the city that we know today. There, in an unlikely setting of quiet streets and shaded verandahs, of elegant mansions and grandly arcaded offices, the seeds were planted for the boundless ambitions that would – in good time – transform this mercantile community from a coastal backwater into one of the most remarkable cities of Asia.