ONCE UPON A TIME HONG KONG

Once Upon A Time HONG KONG Peter Moss

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St.John’s Cathedral A bastion of the Anglican faith, in an infant colony that rapidly became the target of missionaries seeking converts to rival religions, St. John’s Cathedral took an early and stalwart position on high ground at the core of the expanding community. The congregation gathered for services in a temporary matshed until work commenced on a more permanent structure in 1849. To this day St. John’s remains the oldest Western ecclesiastical building in Hong Kong, in addition to being the longest surviving Anglican church in the Far East.

It occupies the sole plot of freehold land ever to be granted in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.

On the right is Battery Path, named for the fact that it led from the seashore to the Murray Battery, part of Hong Kong’s earliest defences. The path slopes downhill to the junction of Queen’s Road Central and Ice House Street, where stood this magnificent columned edifice housing the National City Bank Building, completed in 1931. A map dated 1911 shows a “Grand Hotel” located on this site, where now stands a more angular structure simply named 8, Queen’s Road Central.

During the mid-1970s, under the leadership of CEO Walter B. Wriston, First National City Bank was renamed Citibank.

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Beloved Icon Designed by Palmer and Turner, this third generation of the Bank would remain, until well after World War II, the tallest and most prominent building in Hong Kong, so beloved by clients that they coveted plasticmoulded models of it to present to their children as coin boxes in which to deposit their first savings. In terms of feng shui, the lore of harmonious relationships between the works of man and nature, its location was recognized as ideal, placing it directly astride the energy flow between mountain and sea. The Bank’s main hall had something of the aura of a cloistered cathedral, with a barrel-vaulted ceiling bearing mosaic murals of such artistry and detail that they could cause patrons, waiting their turn at

from his sketches in the equivalent of an experimental Sistine Chapel. When the Bank

the counters, to strain their necks gazing upwards. The work of a highly

was slated for demolition in 1978, to make way for yet another transformation of the

artistic but temperamental White-Russian emigrĂŠ known simply as

already overcrowded headquarters, the management initially hoped to save these

Podgoursky, the ceiling illustrated the theme of commerce between East

frescoes, but eventually abandoned the plan when it was discovered that the tiles had

and West. Podgoursky was sent to Venice to supervise the manufacture of

been cemented directly to the reinforced concrete. Fragments were saved, including

the four million or so tiles required for the mosaics, there he rented an

that of the God of Wealth that formed part of one of the end panels, and are stored in

abandoned church and worked with a team to produce full-size drawings

a Bank warehouse.

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Princely Premises In Hong Kong allegiance to the monarchy extended to the naming of buildings; three prime examples being the Queen’s, King’s and Prince’s Buildings fronting the west side of Statue Square and separated by the intervening Chater Road. The sign affixed to the corner of Prince’s Building (left) marks the offices of Caldbeck MacGregor & Co. Ltd., established on the China Coast in 1864, and later the largest purveyor of wines and spirits in the Far East. Designed by Leigh & Orange, Prince’s Building opened for business in 1904, five years after the similarly structured Queen’s Building, designed by the same firm. More than half a century later, Leigh & Orange would be commissioned to design the Mandarin Hotel, which today occupies the site of the former Queen’s Building, partially seen on the right in this 1930s view of Statue Square as photographed from the upper floor of the Hong Kong Club Building.

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An Extravagance of Signage Queen’s Road began its route through Hong Kong’s commercial heart as a refined thoroughfare lined with prosperous buildings. However it became progressively less dignified, and a great deal more colourful, as it snaked westward through the more visibly Chinese sector of town. Here it coursed between open-fronted shops, overcrowded tenements and impromptu markets bristling with shop signs. In this view, again dating from 1939, we see familiar English brand names identifying the already popular San Miguel Beer and Bata Shoes, produced by a company founded in 1894 in Zlin (then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and today the Czech Republic). The family of its founder, Tomáš Bat’a had been cobblers for generations.

At upper right is a sign identifying what was already another familiar brand name, Camel, but this time associated with paints rather than cigarettes. Hong Kong’s longest surviving western-style restaurant, Jimmy’s Kitchen, borrowed its name from an earlier restaurant in Shanghai, owned by a friend of its founder.

The first branch in Hong Kong was launched in Wanchai in 1928.

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Nexus of Communications Viewed from the railway terminus, the Star Ferry’s Tsim Sha Tsui concourse rapidly became the vital confluence of road, rail and sea traffic that it would remain for years to come. However passengers boarding trains that would connect at the Lo Wu terminus, with China’s own rail network, faced a degree of uncertainty as to whether they would reach their destinations. The Kowloon Canton Railway’s annual report for 1923 has this to say on the subject: “The tourist traffic between Hong Kong and Canton by rail is increasing each year. On 17 January, arrangements for carrying 400 tourists from the S.S. Laconia were made, but unfortunately the military interference on the Chinese section compelled the cancelling of these arrangements.

The S.S. Resolute arrived with tourists on 4 March, the S.S. Empress of France on 15 March and the S.S. Samaria on 2 April. A number of these tourists visited Canton by special trains and were highly appreciative of the service generally. Tourists from the S.S. Resolute and S.S. Empress of France travelled both ways by train, whilst those from the S.S. Samaria made the journey one way by rail and the other by steamer.”

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A Royal Finalé The coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953 provided a fitting excuse for pulling out all the stops on another royal jamboree. As in the case of Nathan Road, this view, looking west down Queen’s Road is still lined with pre-war tenements that would soon be replaced by taller structures keeping just within the height restraints imposed by the presence of Kai Tak Airport. When the Queen paid her first visit to Hong Kong in 1975, accompanied by the Duke of Edinburgh, the centrepiece of a crowded itinerary was another grand parade along Nathan Road. Kowloon’s key thoroughfare once more proved an ideal choice, since it was about to be closed to traffic and excavated to lay the tracks for Hong Kong’s first Mass Transit Railway line. The ingredients of the procession were much the same; a cavalcade made up of military and police bands, various community associations, educational establishments, practitioners of kung fu and martial arts, dancers from a local ballet school and, of course, the traditional dragon dancers that must accompany any local festivity. The showpiece of the entire promenade was a descendant of the royal yellow dragon, rippling its gigantically elongated mane, virtually a full block in length, with five-toed claws flashing auspiciously in all directions.

Both occasions, the coronation celebrations in 1953 and the royal visit in 1975, would long be recalled as typical examples of Hong Kong ‘strutting its stuff’ to memorable effect.

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They dwelt in marbled halls, overlooking spectacular vistas, breakfasted amid potted plants on arched verandahs and were borne in sedan chairs down to a gracious mercantile metropolis of classical elegance. They were the pioneers, living in a city very different from the one that has replaced it.

What they built has not survived. Almost nothing remains of their era except the historical record and the photographic plates that have preserved their vanished architecture, faithfully recaptured in this volume of what Hong Kong was, once upon a time.

ISBN 978-988-98270-9-0