The rise and demise of Alexandra Road (North) Estate

It was recently announced that Alexandra Post Office along Alexandra Road would be demolished for housing; in all, 1,500 flats would be built on a largely-empty parcel of land 3.7 hectares in area.

Alexandra Post Office, completed in 1957, is the final surviving landmark of a historic housing estate that once occupied the junction of Tanglin and Alexandra roads. Alexandra Road (North) Estate, also known as Alexandra North Estate, possessed a connection to royalty and a colonial past.

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Alexandra Road (North) Estate was completed around 1952 - almost 70 years ago - by the Singapore Improvement Trust (SIT), the predecessor of the Housing & Development Board. On 6 February that year, King George VI of the United Kingdom died; his daughter ascended the throne, and would be crowned the following year as Queen Elizabeth II.

However, just acceding to the throne in 1952 already earned Elizabeth and her immediate family rewards in the form of having places in Singapore, a Crown Colony, named after them. Elizabeth herself got Queenstown named after her; meanwhile, her husband Prince Philip, and their children Prince Charles and Princess Anne, had roads in the newly-completed Alexandra Road (North) Estate named after them.

From left: Elizabeth, Anne, Charles, and Philip, in 1952 - four royals who gave their names to places in Singapore. Credit: AP.

The main thoroughfare became Prince Philip Avenue, while shorter roads were named Prince Charles Crescent, Prince Charles Square, and Princess Anne Close.

The Straits Times, 1 May 1952. Credit: Singapore Press Holdings.

Below is the estate in 1954, shaded blue.

Alexandra Estate School was the first school to serve the estate. Within a couple of years, the school’s boys were transferred to Pasir Panjang School; the mixed school became a girls’ school. As it lay next to Prince Charles Crescent, it was renamed Crescent Girls’ School.

Below is the estate in 1970, with individual blocks of flats drawn in. Part of Princess Anne Close had been expunged.

Base picture credit: Survey Department, Singapore.

Other schools serving the estate included Belvedere School, Alexandra Estate Primary School, Jervois West School, and Jervois East School. All schools are highlighted red.

Jervois West School, 1974. Credit: Lim Hock Heng Collection, courtesy of National Archives of Singapore.

The estate also had a market, and Alexandra Post Office, both highlighted green.

Below is the estate in 1988, with Blocks 1 to 75 numbered. A community centre named Delta stood next to Block 3.

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In terms of Singapore’s modern history, SIT estates do not have a long shelf life.

As Alexandra Road (North) Estate was built in the early 1950s, most of the 75 housing blocks were just three storeys tall, consisting mostly one to two-room flats. By the 1980s, there was higher demand for taller blocks with larger three, four, and five-room flats. This, with a relative lack of awareness about heritage conservation, meant older estates like Alexandra Road (North) were doomed.

The estate in 1992. Credit: Courtesy of National Archives of Singapore.

Between 1988 and 1998, all 75 housing blocks were demolished. The blocks north of Alexandra Canal went first, then the blocks south of the canal a few years later.

Below is what’s left of the estate in 1998.

In the west, Princess Anne Close and part of Prince Philip Avenue were expunged for two condominium projects, Tanglin Regency and Tanglin View. The campus of Crescent Girls’ School was rebuilt.

In the east, the former campus of Jervois Primary School was occupied by the Singapore School for the Deaf and Jervois Special School. Alexandra Post Office and Cheng Teck Sian See Temple were all that was left of the estate.

Two years later, the temple moved to Lorong 20 Geylang, where it still exists today as the Cheng Teck Sian See Buddhist Association.

The next phase of development took place in the east of the former estate between 2012 and 2016.

The blocks that were formerly Jervois West and East schools were torn down; meanwhile, Alexandra Primary School was built on the site once occupied by Blocks 48 to 55, splitting Prince Philip Avenue in two.

Two condominium projects, The Crest and Principal Garden, came up at the expense of parts of Prince Charles Crescent and Prince Charles Square. What’s left of Prince Charles Square was renamed Prince Charles Crescent. Like Princess Anne Close, Prince Charles Square does not exist today.

The third and last phase of development will take place soon, occupying the only remaining plot of open land in the area - an area bounded by Alexandra Canal, Prince Charles Crescent, and Alexandra Road. Inside this plot is most of Prince Philip Avenue, and Alexandra Post Office.

Below is a map of the area today, showing in red the plot to be developed.

Base picture credit: Streetdirectory.com.

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Post offices aren’t built like this anymore - they no longer come as standalone buildings. Most of the Alexandra Post Office building is leased to Pat’s Schoolhouse.

The actual postal facilities are tucked away in a corner of the building.

The compound has a few parking lots.

The market for Alexandra Road (North) Estate used to lie east of Alexandra Post Office, but a field with tall trees is all that is left.

The junction of Prince Charles Crescent (foreground) and Prince Philip Avenue.

Walking east along Prince Philip Avenue.

After the last housing blocks vanished, Prince Philip Avenue became a quiet road; roadside parking then became viable, hence the lots.

The road is lined by tall, mature trees - I hope at least some can be protected when development begins.

The housing blocks may have gone, but the walkways once serving them have survived. These are the urban vestiges I look for when I uncover the layers of history of an area.

Prince Philip Avenue ends in the east with Prince Charles Crescent and Alexandra Primary School.

The future in the background - the soaring towers of Principal Garden loom over the open fields.

On the other side of Alexandra Road, I ascended to the top floor of Block 101 Henderson Crescent for a bird’s eye view of the area to be developed soon. Within this plot, there is a good chance Prince Philip Avenue will be expunged, leaving only a short fragment between Alexandra Primary School and Delta Avenue.

I’ll be back at Block 101 periodically in the coming years to keep tabs on changes to the area.

Mobility in Singapore: A Brief History

Today, I was invited to give a talk to the Intelligent Transportation Society Singapore (ITS Singapore), a society uniting stakeholders from the public and private sectors with interests in transport and transport infrastructure.

For around 30 minutes, I shared about the history of mobility in Singapore over 200 years, in seven parts. Topics covered included the Raffles Town Plan, urban transformation over the last 50 years, the impact of modes of transport such as the rickshaw, motor car, and Mass Rapid Transit (MRT), and transport lessons to be learned from history. Much of the material was taken from my book, Jalan Singapura: 700 Years of Movement in Singapore.

That was followed by a flurry of questions from the floor, good questions that got me thinking about long-term transport visions for Singapore, and how we - both the authorities and the public - can achieve them together.

Thank you for having me, ITS Singapore!

(The photo on the slide is of a Keppel Bus Company Bedford bus, licence plate S7618, sometime in the late 1940s to early 1950s.)

A little slice of Malaya in Spooner Road

A great place to tell a story of Singapore’s transport history is Spooner Road, a rather nondescript road branching off Kampong Bahru Road in two directions. Its story, spanning almost a hundred years, covers the coming and going of different modes of transport, and the arrival and departure of a little slice of Malaya.

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The railway came to Singapore as the Singapore-Kranji Railway in 1903, but a good part of the track was realigned by 1932. The new southern terminus of the railway, by then known as the Federated Malay States Railway (FMSR), was Singapore or Tanjong Pagar Station.

Tanjong Pagar Railway Station, 1932. Credit: Courtesy of National Archives of Singapore.

To accommodate the station and railway yards, an area of mostly open land between Kampong Bahru Road and Keppel Road in the south of the island, next to the Tanjong Pagar docks and wharves, was chosen.

Below is a map of the area in 1923, before the railway track was realigned. Much of the open land was known as “Western Reclamation”, perhaps because the area was once marshy, and had been reclaimed. On hillier ground stood the bungalows of Raeburn Park and Spottiswoode Park.

Credit: The National Archives (United Kingdom).

Below is a map of the area in 1934, after the railway pulled in.

Credit: Farish Ahmad Noor.

To create space for the railway yards and accommodation for railway staff, part of Kampong Bahru Road was realigned to the west; most of the original Kampong Bahru Road, now split in two segments by the railway track, was renamed Kampong Lama Road and Spooner Road (shaded blue) respectively.

“Kampong Lama” means “Old Village”, as compared to “Kampong Bahru” (“New Village”); Spooner Road was named after Charles Edwin Spooner, the first General Manager of the FMSR (below). This honour was posthumous - Spooner had died in 1909, aged 55.

To underscore the fact that the railway was Malayan, accommodation blocks north of the railway yards were named after Malayan sultanates - there were Perak Flats, Selangor Flats, Pahang Flats, Johore Flats, Kedah Flats, Kelantan Flats. There was also an FMSR Running House or Running Bungalow, a rest stop for train drivers.

Credit: Farish Ahmad Noor.

Below is a map of the area in 1970.

Credit: Survey Department, Singapore.

What’s intriguing about the map is that the location of the FMSR Running Bungalow had shifted to its present location, closer to the Kampong Bahru junction. Online articles state that the bungalow was built in the 1930s, but they omit this shift in location. As detailed maps of the area are difficult to come by, I am not sure when exactly the move took place. For now, looking at the 1934 and 1970 maps, I can conclude that the present FMSR Running Bungalow was erected sometime between these two years.

There’s more. A search of the newspaper archives reveals that other flats in the area were named after more Malayan states - there were the Negri Sembilan Flats and Perlis Flats.

A 1957 Straits Times article listing polling stations includes the Malayan names of Spooner Road flats. Credit: Singapore Press Holdings.

Today, just two blocks of flats stand in the area - Kemuning (“Orange Jasmine”) and Melati (“Jasmine”), or 1 and 2 Spooner Road. The footprints of these blocks are too close to the footprints of the Perak and Selangor Flats for all four buildings to have existed at the same time. Hence, I deduce that the Perak and Selangor Flats - and possibly the other flats named after Malayan states - were demolished to make way for the Kemuning and Melati blocks.

When did this urban redevelopment take place? The Perak Flats last appeared in the newspapers in 1964; the Selangor Flats, 1977. My guess is that sometime after 1977, the demolitions took place, followed by the construction of the Kemuning and Melati blocks. None of the blocks with Malayan state names has survived to the present.

In the late 1980s, a second major channel of transport arrived in the area - the Ayer Rajah Expressway, running westwards from East Coast Parkway. It was laid down parallel to the railway track, past Spooner Road and Kampong Lama Road. Not long after, the latter was expunged; the site is a carpark for Keppel Distripark today.

Ayer Rajah Expressway, 1986. Credit: Ministry of Information and the Arts Collection, courtesy of National Archives of Singapore.

Below is a map of the area in 1991. (It is a pity that street directories did not show railway buildings.)

Sometime between 1993 and 2007, Spooner Road was realigned into two branches. One branch served the Kemuning and Melati blocks; another served the railway yard.

Below is a map of the area in 2007.

The junction of Spooner Road (left) and Kampong Bahru Road (right) in 2008.

Credit: Google Maps.

Significant changes came to the area from 2011, after a 108-year era of rail in Singapore came to an end. The railway track from Tanjong Pagar to Woodlands closed for good; the rail operator, Keretapi Tanah Melayu (KTM), returned to Singapore the land on which the railway yard and surrounding buildings stood.

Once Singapore took back the land, it was only a matter of time before redevelopment happened. The track was removed; the yard and its buildings demolished.

The junction of Spooner Road (left) and Kampong Bahru Road (right) in 2013. On the left, the railway building has disappeared.

Credit: Google Maps.

Between 2016 and 2019, the stretch of Kampong Bahru Road in the area was widened from two lanes to four. Meanwhile, Spooner Road was extended to the east to serve another mode of transport - by 2019, Kampong Bahru Bus Terminal opened. Spooner Road was once named because of rail, but is now associated with buses.

Kampong Bahru Road in 2019. It has been widened, and the old junction with Spooner Road has shifted.

Credit: Google Maps.

What has stood the test of time - for now - are the Kemuning and Melati blocks.

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Entering Spooner Road, I passed a crumbling police post, with the sign “Polis” reminding me that it was built by the Malaysians, not Singaporeans.

The post originally guarded an entrance to the railway yard, but because of the realignment of Spooner Road, it now “guards” the way to the Kemuning and Melati blocks.

The post was in a sorry state, with rubbish strewn all over.

I initially thought the post was as old as the railway itself, but according to Google Street View, it was built very recently, sometime between 2008 and 2013. Nevertheless, I hope it can be conserved as part of Singapore’s railway heritage.

The Running Bungalow. Up to 2018, it was used as a Modern Montessori pre-school, but it presently lies empty.

The Kemuning and Melati blocks, painted a delicious kueh-like green and yellow. Currently, they are rental flats.

The Kemuning block - 1 Spooner Road.

The blocks, at least four decades old, have been deprived of the usual Housing & Development Board (HDB) upgrading, making them an urban time capsule: Old doors and grilles, window shutters, old lifts with no windows, laundry racks for the ground-floor units.

There is an open-air carpark between the two blocks (I was facing the Melati block here.)

The Melati block - 2 Spooner Road.

The Melati block as seen from Kampong Bahru Road.

The walkway from Kampong Bahru Road down to the Melati block - the blocks are on lower terrain than the road.

The ground-floor lift lobby of the Melati block.

The old lifts.

Like other old blocks, the common corridor faces out.

And like other old blocks, the lift lobbies are spacious.

The future facing the past - the Melati block offers a good view of the upcoming Avenue South Residence condominium project at 1 Silat Avenue, with two towering 56-storey blocks.

According to the Urban Redevelopment Authority’s 2019 Master Plan, the area is slated for housing, but “subject to detailed planning”.

Credit: Urban Redevelopment Authority.

The Spooner Road area is part of the future Greater Southern Waterfront. It is a short distance from Cantonment MRT Station, which will be integrated with the former Tanjong Pagar Railway Station by 2026. I can’t envision the area not being redeveloped in the future, which could entail the demolition of the Kemuning and Melati blocks, and further realignment of Spooner Road. But I hope some form of railway heritage can be retained.