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Yangon 5 W Stately Survivors:
Heritage Buildings of
ith all signs pointing to a development boom in Myanmar, the time to take stock of the former capital Yangon’s ageing old architecture is now. Fortunately, a writer called Sarah Rooney has done just that, pieced together the social history of its most architecturally and historically significant British colonialera buildings. Delving into out-of-print books, company records, old city directories, newspaper archives and people’s memories, the resulting book, ‘30 Heritage Buildings of Yangon’, is a tour de force of research that we hope will help ensure the city’s architectural past has a future (something that is by no means assured as the country opens up to new investment and property developers eye up prime plots of land in the city centre). Here are five highlights from the book, which is in the shops now priced at B1,200.
Ministers’ Office
Judged on scale and grandeur, the former Secretariat is the most spectacular colonialera building in Yangon. After the British annexation of Upper Burma in 1886, the colonial government’s administrative work increased exponentially and there was an urgent need to expand the cramped and poorly lit Secretariat, which was originally located on Strand Road. Designs for the new one were drawn by Henry Hoyne-Fox, an architect of the old school who exported the grandiloquent Victorian aesthetic to the East. Once completed, the entire colony was effectively run from within its labyrinthine halls, the number of departments a testament to the fastidious organisational might of the British Empire. The single most significant event to take place here happened on the morning of 19 July 1947, just six months before Myanmar’s independence from Britain. On that day, national leader and founder of the Burmese army General Aung San and six ministerial colleagues were assassinated while attending a meeting of the Executive Council in the southwest corner of the building. It was an event that changed the course of Burmese history. Location: 300 Theinbyu Road Built: 1889-1905
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