Swan and Maclaren

Acknowledgements v

Preface 1

Introduction 2

PART ONE 1888–1899

1. Archibald Alexander Swan: Introducing the Man 6

2. Messrs Swan & Lermit: Surveyors and Civil Engineers 10

3. Swan Alone: 1890–1892 18

4. Swan & Maclaren: The Founding of the Practice 24

5. Hotels, Clubs and Early Residential Work 34

6. A Class Act: Bidwell Joins the Practice 40

7. Shophouses and Godowns: An Urban Archetype 48

8. A Penang Interlude: George Town, 1895–1898 56

9. A Jubilee Year: 1897 60

10. Arts and Crafts: The Residential Architecture of Regent Bidwell 68

11. A Victorian Swansong: Swan & Maclaren at the Turn of the Century 82

PART TWO 1900–1914

12. Robinson Road Wrenaissance: A Corporate Style for a New Century 90

13. From Edwardian Baroque to Indo-Saracenic 100

14. Industry and Transport: Ramping up the Infrastructure 106

15. Variations on a Theme: From Shophouse to Townhouse 112

16. Gracious Living: The Tropical Edwardian House 120

17. Grand Tourism: The Battle of the Hotels 130

18. The Sporting Life: Clubs and Leisure 138

19. Three Masterworks 146

20. The Curious Fate of Mr Bidwell 158

21. Broadening the Horizon: Bangkok and Surabaya 168

22. Kuala Lumpur Pursuits 172

23. A Changing of the Guard 180

24. David McLeod Craik Joins the Practice 190

PART THREE 1914–1941

25. The Great War Years: 1914–1918 202

26. Mercantile Palaces and the Modern Classical Style 210

27. Interlopers: The Arrival of Rivals 228

28. The Golden Era of the Black and White House 234

29. Tropical Voysey: The Residential Architecture of Frank Wilmin Brewer 246

30. Mansion Blocks, Flats and Tenements: The Advent of Apartment Living 254

31. Going Dutch: Social Housing and the Influence of the Amsterdam School 262

32. Upwardly Mobile: Designing Homes for an Emergent Middle Class 268

33. Up and Down the Peninsula: Swan & Maclaren in Malaya Between the Wars 274

34. Swan, Maclaren & Craik: The Penang Years 284

35. Memorialising the Rajahs: Swan & Maclaren in Kuching 294

36. Swan & Maclaren Sacred: The Churches and Memorials 298

37. Romantic Orientalism: Mosques and Temples 308

38. Corridors of Learning: Schools and Colleges 316

39. A Matter of Style: From Neo-Georgian to Chinese Renaissance 328

40. Art Deco Singapore 334

41. The Residential Architecture of Denis Santry 350

42. Early Modern: Stripped Classical and the Great West Road 358

43. Shophouses Between the Wars 370

44. More or Less: The Advent of Modernism 376

Reflecting on Fifty Years 397

Swan & Maclaren Today 400

Gazetted Buildings Designed by Swan & Maclaren 410

Endnotes 411

Bibliography 424

Index 426

Founded in 1892 by the eponymous Messrs Archibald Alexander Swan and James Waddell Boyd Maclaren, Swan & Maclaren is the oldest architectural practice in Singapore. Not only that but in the course of their 127-year history, one of the most successful too. Almost from the very first moment that the new partnership drew breath in February 1892, the practice was pre-eminent, securing top-flight commissions for prestige buildings and enjoying an almost unbroken chain of success for fifty years to the outbreak of the war in the Pacific (1941–1945). There was a brief period in the late 1920s when Swan & Maclaren faced a serious challenge from the rival British partnership of Keys & Dowdeswell, but the latter foundered, leaving Swan & Maclaren in top position once more, a place they maintained until the Second World War, which is where the present study ends; a second volume charting the firm’s achievements in the postwar era through to the present day is to follow.

The two founding partners, both of them Scotsmen, were engineers with a background in railways. They came to Singapore to work for the Singapore Tramway Company, their paths having previously crossed in Scotland when they were both in the employ of the Glaswegian railway engineer John Strain—it was John Strain who secured the contract to build the tramway in 1882 and both Swan and Maclaren arrived in Singapore under his auspices.

Swan was the first to go out on his own, initially being engaged in railway surveys in the Malay Peninsula before entering into partnership with Englishman Alfred Lermit in 1888. Lermit was a surveyor by training, but he had some prior experience in architecture before coming to Singapore and this led to early architectural commissions alongside the railway surveys, most notably a godown at Clarke Quay for the prominent British merchant house Paterson, Simons & Co. in 1890. The partnership of Swan & Lermit was relatively shortlived, but Swan continued to practise as an architect after the departure of Mr Lermit, producing the iconic Medical Hall on Battery Road towards the end of that same year. In the meantime, J. W. B. Maclaren had also quit the Singapore Tramway Company to join Messrs Swan & Lermit as an Assistant Engineer in 1889. In February 1892, he was elevated to the position of partner, alongside Archibald Swan, the new association being styled Swan & Maclaren.

At the time that Swan & Maclaren was established, the architectural community in Singapore was close-knit, informal, with very little regulation other than a requirement that drawings for new buildings be submitted to the Municipality for the inspection and approval of the Municipal Engineer. Just about anyone who had a mind to could practise as an architect,

provided their buildings were habitable and, as a general rule, didn’t fall down. Since the vast majority of buildings erected in Singapore in the late-nineteenth century comprised two- or three-storey structures—shophouses, godowns (warehouses) and bungalows—this was perfectly reasonable. In the case of government buildings and other major civic works such as churches, meeting halls and theatres, these were erected by government or military engineers in the employ of the colonial administration; they also took on private commissions when required. It was a system that had been in place since the earliest days of the Settlement, founded by Sir Stamford Raffles in the name of the East India Company in 1819 and one that had served the architectural needs of nineteenth-century Singapore well.

By the mid-to-late 1880s, however, the situation was beginning to change as Singapore’s growing prosperity in the late-Victorian era created a demand for newer and bigger buildings that not only were structurally sound, but were attractive and well-considered from a design perspective too. In this respect, Messrs Swan and Maclaren were in the right place at the right time. As engineers they had the technical skills to erect large multi-storey buildings using the latest materials and building technologies, but they also knew a thing or two about architecture as well. Or at least Swan did—Maclaren, it seems, was not involved with the design side of the practice. In this respect Swan & Maclaren were wellpositioned to take advantage of the rebuilding of Singapore at the turn of the twentieth century, as the city underwent one of its periodic facelifts and reinventions. From the word go, the newly established practice was able to secure important commissions in the private sector. One of their first projects was the Hongkong & Shanghai Bank’s first purpose-built bank building and corporate headquarters in Singapore in early 1892 and this was followed a year later by a similar commission for the Chartered Bank of India, Australia and China.

After this there was no looking back for the practice, the only time when the firm experienced any serious difficulties being in the late 1920s when they faced stiff competition from former government architects, Messrs Keys & Dowdeswell of the Fullerton Building fame. The setback was only temporary and with the withdrawal of the latter from Singapore in the early 1930s, Swan & Maclaren reassumed their pre-eminence in Singapore’s architectural community, a position they retained until the outbreak of the war in the Pacific, which is where the present volume ends.

Looking back over Swan & Maclaren’s achievements during this fifty-year period, a good case can be made for arguing that the story of Singapore architecture at this time

and the history of Swan & Maclaren is to a large extent one and the same—certainly where prestige commercial and civic buildings are concerned. Raffles Hotel, Goodwood Park Hotel (formerly the Teutonia Club), Eden Hall, the official residence of today’s British High Commissioner, Stamford House, the Victoria Memorial Hall and Theatre, the Chesed-El Synagogue on Oxley Rise, the Singapore Cricket Club, the Chinese High School at Bukit Timah (today’s Hwa Chong Institution), Telegraph House by Lau Pa Sat (today’s Sofitel Hotel), the Federated Malay States Railway Terminus at Tanjong Pagar—these are just some of the surviving Swan & Maclaren buildings from that period, which today are central to Singapore’s architectural heritage from the British era. To this may be added scores of lesser-known buildings that can also be found all over town. Comprising shophouses, industrial buildings, bungalows and a multitude of other works, they stand testimony to the wide-ranging and varied output of the practice over more than half a century. And then there is the great “lost legacy” portfolio: two versions of the Hongkong & Shanghai Bank building on the corner of Battery Road and Collyer Quay (today’s bank building is also by Swan & Maclaren); the Union Insurance Company of Canton building next door; Winchester House and St Helen’s Court a little farther along Collyer Quay; two iterations of the Chartered Bank on Battery Road; John Little’s department store across the street in Raffles Place; Katz Bros (latterly Robinson’s Department Store) on the other side of the square and Raffles Chambers next door. These were landmark buildings in their day that sadly lost out to the passage of time.

Swan & Maclaren was not the only successful architectural practice to have been in business during the latter half of the British era. In the early years of the practice, there was Edward Osborne of Crane Bros, who was one of the first professionally-trained architects to have worked in Singapore. There was also Alfred Lermit, Swan’s former partner, who left to head the architectural department at Crane Bros and then subsequently went into partnership with the Eurasian architect, J. B. Westerhout, at the start of the new century. Westerhout later went out on his own before going into partnership with former government architect, William Campbell Oman in the 1920s. And then there was Keys & Dowdeswell, also former government architects, who stole something of Swan & Maclaren’s limelight in the latter half of the 1920s and the early 1930s. At which point, we see the advent of the professionally-qualified Singaporean architect: the practices of E. C. Seah, Chung & Wong and Ho Kwong Yew are the most prominent, but there were many more, all of whom were capable of wresting jobs and clients away from Swan & Maclaren should the opportunity have arisen. Despite this gradual intensification of the competition, especially in the years leading up to the war in the Pacific, Swan & Maclaren

were invariably to the fore and almost always leading from the front, except for that brief period during the late 1920s and early 1930s when they came under pressure from London interlopers Keys & Dowdeswell. But the threat passed and Swan & Maclaren resumed their position as the leading architectural practice in Singapore through to the outbreak of the Second World War.

This volume tells the story of these formative years of Swan & Maclaren and the lives and endeavours of the men who built the practice up: the founders, Messrs Swan and Maclaren themselves; James Meikle, the first professional architect employed by the firm; Regent Alfred John Bidwell, indisputably the greatest architect of the British era; the very talented David McLeod Craik, who briefly succeeded him in Singapore and then headed a branch office in Penang; Denis Santry and Frank Lundon, architects of the early Modern era between the world wars; Frank Brewer, Singapore’s answer to C. F. A. Voysey; and Modernist Doucham Slobodov Petrovitch. There are lesser names too, long overlooked, but who fully deserve our attention, among them Thomas Swales, Victor Flower, Vincent Steadman, Eric Channon and C. J. Stephen, a long line that culminates, just before the Second Word War, in C. Y. Koh, Swan & Maclaren’s first Singaporean staff architect. Koh’s inclusion in the Swan & Maclaren line-up was a pivotal moment and one that heralded the dawn of a new era in which Singaporean architects would come increasingly to the fore. But before this could take place there came the scourge of war and three years of Japanese Occupation. After the war, C. Y. Koh would play an important role in the revival of Swan & Maclaren’s fortunes, going on to lead the practice, together with A. G. Church, in the 1950s as Singapore stood poised on the threshold of independence from Great Britain and a new beginning as a sovereign nation. But that is another story to be told in volume two.

The present volume documents what might be regarded as Swan & Maclaren’s “classical” period, a golden era, which saw Singapore transformed from a nineteenth-century entrepôt into modern port city. Swan & Maclaren, as the leading architectural practice during this period, played a major role in this transformation of the city, producing, over fifty years, several generations of top-flight buildings, which chart Singapore’s march towards modernity. Today, we live in yet another incarnation of the city—Singapore is forever reinventing itself—but there are still a great many landmark buildings, designed by Swan & Maclaren, which recall that earlier time. Collectively, they constitute an important architectural legacy for the nation, one that both conserves and illuminates Singapore’s historic past, while simultaneously underpinning and informing the identity of modern-day Singapore. This is the story of how they came about.

Shophouses and Godowns An Urban Archetype 7

The Singapore shophouse is a local archetype, which until the advent of the International-style corporate tower block and modern shopping mall—that is to say the beginning of the 1970s—dominated the urban landscape of Singapore. Even today there are over 6,000 surviving examples currently gazetted under the Urban Redevelopment Authority’s architectural conservation programme. Its origins lie in Mainland China, but it is a style of architecture that also has a long history in Southeast Asia, being introduced to the region by Chinese immigrants, possibly as early as the fifteenth or sixteenth centuries. In the case of the Singapore shophouse, building regulations laid down by Sir Stamford Raffles in his Town Ordinances of November 1822 both standardised and codified the basic ingredients of the Chinese shophouse, while introducing certain requirements of Raffles’s own devising—most importantly the mandatory five-foot way or public verandah at street level—to create an urban typology that would define the Singaporean streetscape for the next 150 years. So successful was the Singaporean shophouse as an urban archetype that it spread to neighbouring countries in the region—not just British Malaya and the other Straits Settlements, but also Burma, Thailand, Sarawak and British North Borneo, the Dutch East Indies, French Indochina and even, via the Treaty Ports, Mainland China.

The typical nineteenth-century Singapore shophouse comprised a two- or three-storey building with commercial premises on the ground floor and living accommodation above. The ground floor was set back a little from the street with the upper storey, supported by a pair of columns, projecting forward in line with the edge of the road to create a covered verandah in front of the shop. Because shophouses, whether they were built individually or as a row of units in a single development, were ultimately intended to be incorporated into a terrace of similar buildings, this verandah effectively constituted a continuous covered walkway or colonnade at street level, along which pedestrians could stroll, protected from both the sun and the rain alike. The frontage of a traditional shophouse was quite narrow—as wide as could be feasibly spanned by a single timber beam in the days before reinforced concrete—but they often extended backwards from the street a fair way, the interior being lit by strategically placed airwells—narrow courtyards, open to the sky—which also helped with ventilation and the cooling of the building. Building regulations, introduced in 1907, more or less put an end to the traditional airwell,1 giving rise instead to a new shophouse typology with an L-shape plan and a rear courtyard, a configuration not unlike that of the Victorian terrace house in Britain.

Clients and commissions

In the early years of the firm’s existence, Swan & Maclaren received relatively few shophouse commissions, a rare exception being a couple of units at Cheng Cheok Street in Tanjong Pagar, which were designed by Archibald Swan for comprador Gan Eng Seng in 1891. This might seem surprising at first, given that the shophouse is such a ubiquitous feature of the Singaporean urban landscape, but the fact is that up until the turn of the last century, designing and building shophouses was largely the preserve of home-grown Singaporean architects—local men like Wee Teck Moh, Yeo Hock Siang, Lao Chee Hean, Eurasians Henry Richard and George d’Almeida, and the Malay architect Wan Mohamad Kassim. Since they were extremely familiar with the building type and were more than competent designers in their own right, it was seldom the case that their mainly Asian clients would feel the need to turn to a European architectural practice to carry out their work for them. The one exception to this general rule was the Anglo-Tamil partnership of Lermit & Annamalai, which was in business between 1884 and 1887, and whose output mainly consisted of shophouses for Asian clients.

above Houses in Telok Ayer Street to be re-erected for Messrs Guthrie & Co. as Agents for the Estate of the late John Crauford [sic], 1893.

An early shophouse commission for Swan & Maclaren was the rebuilding of two units in Telok Ayer Street for the Estate of the late John Crawfurd in 1893. Whether or not they dated back to the time of Mr Crawfurd is unclear—John Crawfurd was Singapore’s second Resident between 1823 and 1826—but they were certainly very old buildings by Singapore standards, even in 1893. One archaic feature is the extremely long and narrow plan, which in this instance includes two airwells and a courtyard at the rear. This is a characteristic that it shares with buildings of a similar vintage found in Malacca and other cities in Southeast Asia where the Chinese have long been settled.

opposite page A Chinese street in Singapore, from Present Day Impressions of the Far East & Prominent and Progressive Chinese at Home and Abroad (1917).

For 150 years the shophouse defined the urban landscape of Singapore and even in the modern era it still retains its status as a Singapore icon. Incorporating a wide range of architectural influences and disparate cultural elements, they are a physical embodiment of Singapore’s plural society.

above Reconstruction of a house on Quee Lan Hill for Khoo Han Yeng [sic] Esq., Regent Bidwell, 1906.

below Stables at Club Street for Khoo Han [Hun] Yeang, 1904.

Two years prior to the building of his hilltop mansion, Khoo Hun Yeang commissioned Swan & Maclaren to design a coach house and stables at the end of the Club Street cul-de-sac. The result was a charming Neo-Classical pavilion with parking for two coaches and stalls for fourteen horses at the rear, plus dormitory accommodation on the floor above for the grooms, or syces, who attended them.

Chinese gentlemen’s clubs

The Cricket Club, the Swimming Club, the Singapore Club and the Tanglin Club9 Maclaren was club president of the last in 1900—were all bastions of the British upper crust in colonial times, places of retreat where Englishmen could lay down the “White Man’s burden” and relax in the company of their own kind, without being obliged to play the “pucka Sahib” all the time. The latter consideration being an important aspect of these institutions, there was a colour bar in place, which closed their doors to Asian members, the occasional Malay Sultan or visiting Maharajah excepted.10 But perhaps this didn’t worry the local elites unduly for they had their own social clubs, which were every bit as exclusive as their European counterparts. These varied in style and interest. There were some that were modelled along the lines of a typical British sports club—the Straits Chinese Recreation Club, for example, was established in 1884 for the express purpose of playing lawn tennis, cricket and the practising of English athletic sports. Others, such as the Celestial Reasoning Association or the various musical salons dedicated to the performance of Chinese Classical music, were of a more oriental mien. Some were distinctly highbrow—the Philomathic Society was one such institution, its intended purpose being “the regular study of English Literature, Western Music and the Chinese Language”. Lastly, there were those gatherings that were very like an English “gentleman’s club”, the sort of establishment one might ordinarily expect to find in St James’s or Pall Mall, London.

The best-known example of the latter institution was the celebrated Weekly Entertainment Club on Ann Siang Hill. Founded in 1885, it admitted only Englishspeaking Straits-born Chinese with lots of money to their name: tin-mining towkays, shipping magnates and the heads of powerful trading empires. Millionaires to a man, they would meet on a regular basis to discuss the affairs of the day and enjoy the rarefied pleasures of one another’s company. Next door was the Goh Loo Club, established 1909, otherwise known as the “Bankers’ Institute” because most of the directors of the Chinese banks were members. And then directly opposite there was the Chui Lan Teng, the oldest of the clubs on Club Street, which occupied a bungalow at the very top of the hill dating back to the days when Ann Siang Hill was a nutmeg plantation.

The Chui Lan Teng was the club that gave Club Street its name, but was no longer in existence by the end of the nineteenth century, the property passing through several hands before it was acquired by a Mr Khoo Hun Yeang (1860–1917) around 1902. Khoo was originally from Penang where he was a well-known merchant and plantation owner. He also ran the island’s opium and spirit farm in which his father had a share. Khoo moved to Singapore in 1899, where his business acumen was soon recognised by the local opium and spirit farm concessionaires, who appointed him as a managing partner of the Singapore Farm. Khoo continued as manager of the farm until 1906, which was the same year that he commissioned Swan & Maclaren to carry out a major rebuilding of his house on the summit of Ann Siang Hill.11

The brief was to redevelop the site as a private residence for Khoo Hun Yeang, but with additional facilities for a gentlemen’s club included. Though the drawings are unsigned—they bear the initials S. R., indicating they were prepared by S. Rozario, a draughtsman who worked for Swan & Maclaren between 1901 and 1914—the style is unmistakably “Bidwell Wrenaissance”, indicating that he was the author of this work, the only other architect employed by Swan & Maclaren at this time being Victor Flower. Bidwell responded with a huge mansion, dominated by a grand colonnade of doubleheight Corinthian columns arranged along the principal southwest elevation. The building was divided in two, with one half being reserved for the private apartments of Mr Khoo and the other half assigned to his club. The entrance to the Khoo residence was from today’s Club Street cul-de-sac and was at a slightly lower level to the main part of the house. It comprised a lofty three-storey tetrastyle portico rising from a rusticated base. The entrance to the gentlemen’s club was at the other end of the building and to the side. It consisted of a two-storey Chinese-style pavilion with a terrace, or mirador, on the upper floor, which would have afforded magnificent views across Chinatown in the direction of Pearl’s Hill. A first-floor verandah at the opposite end of the mansion provided Mr Khoo with an equally splendid vista, in this instance looking out across the roofs of Telok Ayer to the Straits of Singapore. The best view of all, however, was to be had from the octagonal drum tower, or observatory, raised over the Khoo apartments, which offered a 360-degree panorama of the entire city. As well as adding drama to the composition, it was a landmark that could be seen from anywhere in the city, rising above the roofs of Chinatown like a Singaporean Montmartre.

below

By the time this photograph was taken in the 1930s, the building was home to the Yeung Ching School—a pupil can be seen standing on the steps. Originally founded as a Cantonese-language school in 1906, the Yeung Ching School (by now bilingual) took over the premises in 1918. Forty years later, the school had grown too large to be housed in the existing building, and in 1957 Mr Khoo’s mansion was demolished to make way for new classrooms and school facilities. In 1988 the school was converted by the government into the Yangzheng Primary School and relocated to Serangoon; the Emerald Garden condominium occupies the site today.

above Ann Siang Hill, photographed in the 1950s, with the drum tower of Mr Khoo’s mansion, prominent against the skyline.

The southeast corner of the Khoo Hun Yeang mansion, looking up at Mr Khoo’s apartments.

Interlopers The Arrival of Rivals 27

The Hongkong & Shanghai Bank, the Union Building and Telegraph House were all completed by the end of 1924 and that same year Santry and Lundon were both made partners of Swan & Maclaren. This followed the retirement of Harry Robinson, who had stepped down at the end of the previous year—he had led the firm since the departure of A. J. W. Watkins in 1915. The retirement of Robinson left Herbert Courtney Atkin-Berry at the head of the practice—Atkin-Berry relocated from Kuala Lumpur to Singapore—with Santry and Lundon as his junior associates; presumably Santry and Lundon were on an equal footing since they joined Swan & Maclaren at the same time. They were supported by staff architects Cyril James Stephen and the talented Frank Wilmin Brewer, both of whom had joined the firm in 1920.

Keys & Dowdeswell

The year 1924 was also when work began on a new General Post Office and Government offices at Fullerton Road. This was a project that had aroused considerable public interest over several years since the proposed building was to be the

largest structure yet erected in the Straits Settlements. Designs for the GPO had actually been put on public display as long ago as 1920, but the project had been delayed several times due to the uncertain financial climate. (The US recession of 1921 to 1922 had resulted in a crash in tin and rubber prices, the twin mainstays of the Malayan and Singaporean economies.) It was not until the beginning of 1924, therefore, that work actually began on site.

The new GPO was designed by the London partnership of Keys & Dowdeswell, who were contracted by the Singapore Government to come up with an imposing new edifice for this most prominent and prestigious site, until then occupied by the old General Post Office and the Exchange Building.1 Major Percy Hubert Keys, who was the driving force in the team, was very much the commanding officer type with a distinguished service record in the Royal Engineers during the First World War. Prior to the war, Keys had designed and supervised buildings for the London postal service; with budgets of up to £5,000,000, they included some of the largest reinforced-concrete buildings then erected in London.2 A winner of the Architectural Association’s prestigious Bannister Fletcher medal in 1905, Keys was elected a Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects not long after his arrival in Singapore; Frederick Dowdeswell, who seems to have been the junior party in the practice, was an associate.

During their early years in Singapore, Keys and Dowdeswell were not allowed to accept private commissions on account of their being in the employ of the Singapore Government—an exception seems to have been made in the case of the Sailors’ Institute on Anson Road, which was completed in 1924. This restriction was relaxed in 1927, at which point Keys & Dowdeswell began to accept commissions from the public and private sectors. Overnight, Swan & Maclaren found themselves no longer the biggest fish in the pond, but faced with some fairly serious competition.

The figures speak for themselves: out of the six major corporate commissions in downtown Singapore between 1927 and the end of the decade, only one—Meyer Chambers—went to Swan & Maclaren, the contracts for the other five being awarded to Keys & Dowdeswell. Their clients included the Dutch trading company, Messrs Internationale Credit en Handels Vereeniging Rotterdam (1927); the Mercantile Bank of India (1927); the Kwangtung Provincial Bank (1928); the Oversea-Chinese Bank

opposite page Meyer Chambers, Raffles Place, Frank Lundon, 1929.

Commissioned by Swan & Maclaren’s long-time clients, Meyer Bros, the anchor tenant was the Ho Hong Bank, which moved into the completed building in December 1930 (this was two years before the Ho Hong Bank was incorporated as part of the newlyconstituted Oversea-Chinese Banking Corporation). After the Second World War, Meyer Chambers was taken over by the Overseas Union Bank (established 1949), at which point it became known as OUB Chambers. The building was demolished in 1981 to make way for today’s OUB Centre.

below The General Post Office, otherwise known as the Fullerton Building, Keys & Dowdeswell, 1920–1928.