225 Outram Road in the 50s
225 Outram Road as at 26 June 2008This building has stood at the end of Eng Hoon Street for the past 50 years.
I heard a KWA family owns this building and the immediate neighbour suspects it belongs to a very influential family in Singapore.
I heard a KWA family owns this building and the immediate neighbour suspects it belongs to a very influential family in Singapore.
Anyway, I don’t care who owns it so long as they don’t tear it down to build another boutique hotel.
Here’s a short write up about this building which I found from the book titled: Singapore, A Guide to Buildings, Street and Places by Norman Edward and Peter Keys
One might pass by this corner building without notice it but it is a good example of the Modern Movement style established in England in the 1930s and further developed in the 1950s.
The building has shops on the 1st storey set behind a series of round columns supporting a reinforced concrete frame containing 5 storeys of apartments above.
A Niemeyer-like curved concrete slab skirts the building to form an awning above the shops and creates an interesting spatial effect in its relationship to the cantilevered slab of apartments above.
The building turns the corner skilfully on 3 sides and is of good proportions.
Windows have sun-shielding cantilevered slabs above on one side and metal curve louvres on the other, very much in the Modern Movement vogue.
Fact: Built in 1956 and designed by Alfred Wong Partnership
3 comments:
Is this where there used to be a bank -- Chung Khiaw bank or something like that?
I'm not too sure about about this being a bank previously.
I do remember a bank at the building that is opposite Tan Tock Seng's grave (Behind the Link Hotel and next to Cape Inn)
My uncle started work at that bank after graduating from NUS. The bank subsequently closed and he was transferred to the Outram Park branch.
The Chung Kiaw Bank is at the junction of Seng Poh Road and Outram Road facing the former Chinese Middle School. The building is still there. There was a major bank-run on Chung Kiaw bank in the early 1960s and as a result United Chinese Bank (now UOB Bank) under the Wee family took over. This bank run is not the same as the bank-run on UOB in 1974. UOB opened a branch in Eng Hoon Street (facing the coffee shop) and open-air badminton court to replace the Chung Kiaw Bank branch at Seng Poh Road/Outram Road in 1972. Today there is no branch but the place sells eggs.
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