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 below

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.

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.