Picture Post 56 - The Majestic Theatre Singapore

Singapore has a reputation for being ultra modern with cutting edge architecture and skyscrapers dominating the cityscape. Whilst this reputation is much deserved, there is also another side to Singapore and it is easy to find examples of earlier architectural splendour. Not least amongst these is the former Majestic Theatre on Eu Tong Sen Street in the Chinatown district. 

Once Chinatown's most significant building, the Majestic still has an imposing presence on this busy street. The exterior is an interesting mix of Chinese and art deco features. Brightly coloured ceramic tiles frame the central element of the facade which is decorated with mosaic representations of figures from Chinese operas, Chinese characters, dragons and flowers. The metalwork on the glazing is also interesting and is similar in design to traditional Chinese screens.

The theatre was commissioned and paid for by Eu Tong Sen, a philanthropist and owner of rubber plantations and tin mines. Originally designed as an opera house, the theatre was a gift for one of his wives, a Cantonese opera singer. Not only did he pay for the theatre, he also formed an opera troupe for her and bought the rest of the street, naming it after himself. Sen engaged Swan and McLaren, the architects responsible for the Raffles Hotel to design his theatre. Work on the 1,194 seat theatre was completed in 1928 when the building opened under the name Tien Yien Moh Toi, or the Tin Yin Dance Stage. Cantonese operas were performed there until 1938 when the building was converted to a cinema and renamed the Queen's. This lasted until 1942 when the Japanese occupiers seized the building, renamed it the Tia Hwa Opera House and used it to screen propaganda films. 

In 1945, the Majestic Film Company took over the building, gave it its name and commenced screening blockbuster Cantonese films and although ownership was to change again in later years, it continued to operate as a cinema until closure in 1998. Today the Majestic is used as a retail market but the grandeur of the facade makes it easy to imagine how it must have been for opera fans arriving at the theatre in the 1930's.

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Chinese Baroque - beautiful shop houses in Singapore's Petain Road.

Shophouses can be found in most parts of the far east. Consisting of ground floor business premises with living quarters at the rear and above, they were normally built in rows or terraces. The ground floor is set back from the road with the upper story projecting forward, supported by columns to form a covered walkway. Earlier this year I was able to visit several shop houses in Singapore including a very special terrace in Petain Road, close to the Little India district.

The 18 terraced houses that form numbers 10-44 Petain Road were commissioned by businessman Mohamed bin Haji Omar and designed by British architect E.V. Miller who submitted plans to the Municipal Building Surveyor's department in May 1930. Haji Omar was also responsible for commissioning shophouses in nearby Jalan Basar whilst Miller usually worked in the completely different Bauhaus style. Until the twentieth century this area was semi-rural with many vegetable gardens. Streets were laid out after the First World War and named for people and places associated with the conflict. Haji Omar's development was realised in what became known as Petain Road, named for the French General who had been a war hero from 1914-18, but who became a notorious collaborator with Germany during the Second World War. Don't let the put you off. The terrace is one of Singapore's most beautiful and best preserved 1930's developments to survive until today. 

The terrace conforms to the usual shophouse design, including having a "five foot way" running its entire length. This is a sheltered walkway with a minimum width of five feet, designed to afford shelter from the rain and the extreme heat for residents, workers and visitors. Most of the terra cotta tiles covering the floor of the walkway are original.

The exteriors are covered in beautiful pastel coloured glazed ceramic tiles, imported from Europe and Japan and illustrated with peonies, tulips, chrysanthemums, birds and other creatures. The tiling continues to first floor level where pilasters decorated with floral motifs are complemented by the green and cream shutters. The terrace sustained some damage during the Second World War and in 1943 number 10 was the subject of an application for permission to carry out repairs. This time the plans were submitted by local architect Kwan Yow Luen and the occupying Japanese authorities granted permission to carry out the works. Luen was also responsible for designing several shophouses including in nearby Balestier Road. Over the following decades, the houses deteriorated until in 1979 there was a proposal to demolish the lot. Fortunately this did not happen and instead significant restoration was undertaken including replacing the many tiles that had been lost with replicas imported from Vietnam.

Today the terrace overlooks a pleasant green space and attracts many tourists, students and devotees of architecture who wish to see one of the best remaining examples of this style sometimes referred to as Chinese Baroque. There is an excellent book about Singapore's shop houses - Singapore Shophouse by Julia Davison, available to purchase online or from the National Museum.

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Tiong Bahru - Singapore's Modernist Social Housing Estate

Singapore is known for its ultra-modern architecture, beautiful shop-houses and a serious approach to shopping. However, the island also has a significant number of surviving modernist and art deco buildings and I was able to see several of them when I recently spent a few days there en route to Australia.

The greatest concentration of deco style buildings in Singapore can be found in the Tiong Bahru neighborhood where in the 1930's, about 50 blocks of  low-rise flats and shop-houses were constructed initially to accommodate residents from overcrowded parts of Chinatown. The public housing project began in 1927 when the Singapore Improvement Trust (SIT) was granted the sum of $260,000 to acquire 70 acres of land in Tiong Bahru for shop house lots on what had been semi-rural land and burial ground. This was no small task, involving a huge marshland reclamation project with some places being up to 2 metres below sea level. By 1931 roads and drains were in place together with plans for building 900 houses to accommodate 13,500 people in total - 15 in each house. It's worth pausing to consider that figure against the purpose of the project - reducing overcrowding elsewhere!

Architect Alfred G. Church was commissioned to design the flats between 1936 and 1941. Church favored the streamline moderne style, abandoning some of the more ostentatious elements of art deco, preferring simple, functional lines reflecting the connections between architecture, the machine age and modernity. The Tiong Bahru buildings from Church's period display many of the classic features of streamline moderne including rounded corners, long horizontal and vertical lines, potholes, bands of windows and flat roofs. The original windows and door frames for the dwellings were imported from England - from the famous Crittal Manufacturing Company that still exists today. Blocks 81 and 82 on Tiong Poh Road particularly reflect the links to the machine age and became known as the aeroplane flats due to their resembling the wings of an airplane.

Although Church was influenced by western architectural preferences, he included a number of elements designed to cope with tropical conditions. These included sheltered walk-ways running the length of buildings, protecting residents from extreme sunshine and from rain, spiral staircases at the rear of the flats, adapted from shophouse designs and acting as a fire escape and locating the kitchen in a protruding section of the apartment, allowing cooking fumes to escape via an air well. This latter feature meant that people could see into each other's kitchens and even speak to each other whilst cooking. Resident Tan Peng Ann told the Oral History Centre of the National Archives of Singapore that "The kitchens were such that you can actually speak to your neighbor. There's an air well and you can talk to your neighbor across it and then with a little bamboo pole you can pass goodies across". This adapting of the style moderne approach to include local elements allowed both for more comfortable living and for a feeling of familiarity for the former Chinatown dwellers.

Perhaps the most distinctive part of the estate is Block 78 where Moh Guan Terrace and Guan Chuan Street meet. Known as the "Horse-shoe block" due to its shape, it was built between 1939 and 1940 and is the largest of the blocks. The ground floor is a mix of residential and shop units, including Hua Bee, one of the oldest coffee shops in the neighborhood. Founded in the 1940's it sold only drinks, bread, eggs and fishball noodles. It was also one of a very small number of coffee shops in Singapore that served coffee with a slice of butter in the cup to enrich the taste - something I have yet to try. The shop was used as a set for Eric Khoo's 1995 film Mee Pok Man. There is a car park at the rear of the block, accessed by passing underneath the flats and a recessed central "elephant's trunk" - a horizontal architectural feature complying with the art deco "rule of three". This together with the deliciously curved corners of the blocks linked by this feature is the star attraction of the estate for me. We will return to Block 78 in due course.

Back to the story. The first units were ready in December 1936 and 11 families moved in to what is today Block 55 at the junction of Tiong Bahru and Tiong Poh roads. It included 28 apartments and four shop units. However the original purpose of the developments seems to have been quickly lost due to the high rental of $25 per month - way beyond the means of poorer Chinese families and so that flats were mainly occupied by members of the "clerical class" and soon after by European families, several of whom were living there by August 1939. This drew the criticism of the Singapore Ratepayers Association, led by one Tay Lian Teck.

1941 there were 784 flats, 54 tenements, 33 shops and over 6,000 residents. Building ceased during the remainder of the Second World War and did not resume until the 1950's. Block 78 had been designed with a huge basement that included a 1500 square metre bomb shelter capable of holding 1600 people. Tiong Bahru was not targeted during Japanese bomb raids and according to former residents the shelter was rarely used. However the estate was targeted for screening out of anti-Japanese elements once the occupation began. Artist and former resident Huang Po-Fang recounted how residents were questioned in a requisitioned coffee shop. Those who did not pass the screening were executed by firing squad but it is said that the investigation officer at Tiong Bahru was more compassionate than those in other parts of Singapore.

During the 1950's a further 1,258 flats were added. These were designed to be surrounded by open space, with grass plots, playgrounds  and other facilities. This approach provide extremely popular and by the late 1950's there were a further 17,000 residents. Linda Koh moved into Moh Guan Terrace in 1942 and is recorded in the Tiong Bahru Heritage Trail publication as saying that during the 1950's several wealthy businessmen kept mistresses on the estate, causing locals to refer to Tiong Bahru as Mei wen ro or den of beauties. The presence of pipa girls in some of the flats added to the somewhat daring atmosphere during the 1950's. The term pipa was a genteel term for a prostitute. The Tiong Bahru pipa girls lived there with their minders. Most had been sold into prostitution at a young age and had been taught to sing, play musical instruments, recite poetry and hold intelligent conversations before branching out into less cultural activities as they grew into maturity.

Although the development commenced as a social housing project, Tiong Bahru is now an extremely sort after residential area. There is recognition of the importance of its built heritage evidenced by commemorative plaques, publications and heritage walks. In 2003 Singapore's Urban Redevelopment Authority gazetted 20 blocks of the pre-war flats for conservation so that the unique architecture can be preserved. 

Tiong Bahru still has a  residential, neighborhood feel to it and has some good local shops. If visiting, the Forty Hands coffee shop at 78 Yong Siak Street is a good place to stop for a rest or if something more substantial is required, there are many stalls in the Tiong Bahru Market and Hawker Centre. Another little gem is Books Actually, a great little book shop just across the road from Forty Hands. Piled high with contemporary fiction,  classics and non-fiction, the stock includes many titles by Singaporean writers. The shop's website is very good and has reviews of new items and the staff are very friendly and able to give advice. I picked up My Mother-in-Law's Son by Josephine Chia which is proving a great read. Tiong Bahru might just be Singapore's best kept secret!

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Picture Post 53 - Singapore's Art Deco Gem - The Cathay Cinema

The Cathay Centre in Singapore's Handy Road is a magnet for young people with its shops, cafes and multiplex cinema. It has the Singapore School of the Arts as its neighbour which no doubt supplies many of its younger customers. However, the original Cathay Cinema building was attracting visitors long before its nearest neighbors came along. Designed by British architect Frank W. Brewer, it was completed in 1939 and at 16 storeys and 83.5 metres tall, it was Asia's first skyscraper. 

Brewer was based in Singapore and designed several other buildings there. His Cathay complex included a 1,300 seat cinema, an hotel and the headquarters of the British Malaya Broadcasting Corporation. The epitome of modernity, the cinema was the first air conditioned public building in Singapore and offered arm chairs to its patrons, something out of the ordinary for 1939. The original interior included black marble pillars, green tiled floors and a gold ceiling - sadly all lost now. The Cathay was declared open by Loke Wan Tho, founder of the Cathay organization and a major mover and shaker in the film industry and the first screening was The Four Feathers starring Ralph Richardson and C. Audrey Smith. 

The Second World War reached Singapore in 1942 and the Cathay was used as a Red Cross casualty station. In February of that year, 14 shells struck the cinema, killing a number of Australians who had been in the hall. When Singapore fell to the Japanese, the occupying forces used it as a broadcasting centre from which to disseminate propaganda and directives to the local populace, including occasionally displaying the severed heads of executed locals.

The Cathay also served as home to the Japanese film director Yasujiro Ozu for the last year of the war. Ozu was to go on to direct the classic Tokyo Story in 1953. During his time in Singapore he is said to have done little work and spent most of his time entertaining guests, drawing and collecting carpets. This must have been disappointing for his superiors who had sent him there to make a propaganda film with the Indian director, Chandra Bose. The building was to have another famous resident from 1945 to 1946 when Lord Louis Mountbatten stayed there in his role as Commander of the Allied Forces in the Far East. The cinema eventually re-opened in 1948 with Tunisian Victory as its first post-war screening, an allied propaganda film. You can see it in its entirety here on youtube if you really want to!

Since then the building has been through many changes. The hotel was converted into flats, an unsympathetic makeover took place in 1978 and in 1990 the Cathay organization announced plans to revamp the entire complex, including demolition of the original cinema. Thankfully the facade was listed as National Monument in 2003 and so this alone survives from the original building. Its striking curves and waves, its geometric centre piece and highly stylized lettering bearing the Cathay name now compete with much taller buildings to the side and the rear and interesting as those newcomers are, the Cathay facade is still the main attraction.

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