The shophouses along Neil Road

This blog on the Shophouses of Neil Road follows on from the one on the Five Foot Ways of Cantonment Road in Singapore.

 

Neil Road is a famous road at the Tanjong Pagar area near to Chinatown. Though not many consider this area as well known for Shophouses as say Chinatown or Geyland Road area's .... nevertheless, it is just as interesting or perhaps even more so, considering it's history!

The road starts at the junction of South Bridge Road, Maxwell Road and Tanjong Pagar Road and ends at Jalan Bukit Merah which then merges into the latter. At the end of the road, it is a conservation area of several shophouses and a three storey Victorian style school building, which was the former site of Fairfield Methodist Girls' School. In the Tanjong Pagar area of the road, it is home to rows of conserved shophouses for various purposes. 

 

 

 

 The road was formerly known as Salat Road (Silat or Selat), the Malay term for "straits". The former Salat Road was part of a nutmeg plantation that flourished on Duxton Hill till the late 1850s. The Malay road name was changed by the Municipal Commissioners in March 1858 in honour of the British heroes in the Indian Mutiny in 1857. 

House number 147 was the home of Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew's grandfather, Lee Hoon Leong, who bought the house in 1920 for $25,000. Lee lived in the house for a few years with his parents and grandfather.

In Hokkien, the road was known as goo chia chwee sia lo, which means "steep street of Kreta Ayer".

 

 

 

 

Had to include this amazing building .... technically still a shophouse - and until recently, the home of EBay and PayPal.

Shophouses were two to four-storey terraced building where the ground floor is used for business purposes and the upper floor for living quarters. They were unique in a way that every shop's front have to reserve a common space five-foot in width, known as five-foot-ways for public access. The purpose is to provide shelter for the pedestrians. This is a really clever and thoughtful implementation, especially in tropical country like Singapore, it keeps us under cover from the rain and sun.

and dare I say that there are two shophouses for sale in 

Neil Road for a total of 9.5 million SGD?

unfortunately I cannot even afford one of them!

Click HERE for the blog post on the 

Five Foot Ways of Cantonment Road

Click HERE for the blog posting on 

the Shophouses of Singapore

Click HERE for the blog posting on 

the shophouses around the Arab Quarters

another site on Shophouses is Shophouses.Sg  

and the area's where they can be located.

hope you have enjoyed reading a little about 

Neil Road in Singapore

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