Historic District
Boat Quay was traditionally the centre of trading activities along the Singapore River. This conservation area’s unique charm and character lies in its warehouses, commonly known as “godowns”, and the two- and three-storey shophouses which line the river.
The History
Boat Quay, at once a name and a description, underscores its pioneer status in the history of Singapore River’s quays. Boat Quay’s waters once carried nearly half of the nation’s imports and a quarter of her exports.
When Raffles landed in 1819, the river bank was lined with dense mangrove swamps. Only today’s Empress Place was terra firma. The Orang Laut lived in floating settlements upriver, while the Malays lived in wooden huts dominated by the Temenggong’s house at the mouth of the river. In Raffles’ 1822-23 Town Plan, he designated the north bank for use by the government – and so it is today. Raffles’ Town plan allocated the land south of the Singapore as the Chinese Kampong.
In 1823, Commercial Square (renamed Raffles Place in 1858) was carved out of a hillock at Battery Road and the earth was used to fill in the swampy south bank to create South Boat Quay. Native traders built rumah rackits, “raft houses” in Malay, around 1822 along the swamplands. Several major business players were first established at Boat Quay including Alexander Laurie Johnston who founded Singapore's first European trading house in 1820; Edward Boustead, Yeo Kim Swee and Tan Kim Seng. The early merchants located their warehouses and offices along this stretch of the river and built their own private jetties..
Boat Quay became the trading frontier. It grew rapidly and eventually outpaced the developments on the northern bank to earn the accolade of “Tua Poh” which, in Hokkien, means “Big Town”. Prominent Chinese businessmen, including the philanthropist Tan Tock Seng, had their trading offices and godowns there. Boat Quay could therefore be said to be the birthplace of Chinese commerce in Singapore. Notably, the Chinese refer to Boat Quay as the “belly of the carp” due to its location and the shape of the river at this wide bend. Traditional Chinese beliefs regard the fish’s belly as the place where good fortune resides.
Singapore’s free port status set the pace for the river’s rapid development from the river mouth upstream to Robertson Quay. With entrepot trade as the country’s main enterprise, the economy was booming and the resulting need for financial facilities saw banks, predecessors of today’s financial institutions in Raffles Place, sprouting along the River and in the nearby Commercial Square, confirming the River’s importance as the commercial hub of Singapore. By the 1840s, the river was too congested and despite the new harbour built at Tanjong Pagar in 1852, three-quarters of all shipping business was still done at Boat Quay in the 1860s.
Widespread use of the steamer ship after the 1869 opening of the Suez Canal most affected traffic on the river, but as shipping demands at the new harbour began to exceed wharf space, a system was started using tongkangs, also known as bumboats or lighters, towed by powered tugs in and out of the river to vessels at sea to transport cargo.
By 1890, the banks of the Singapore River supported more than 100,000 people who lived and worked there. Shipping activities spawned other related industries such as shipbuilding and repair, all of which competed for the same limited expanse of the waterbody. Old names such as Tiam Pang Lo Thau, meaning “beginning of the road for sampans” and Chwi Chu Boi, meaning “the end where there is a bathing house”, which paint a picture of the gamut of uses along the river in the early days.
Its decline really began in the 1960s, as mechanisation and computerisation gradually usurped the tongkang's role in the shipping industry. In September 1983, the government opened a modern, high-tech cargo centre in Pasir Panjang which led to the rapid demise of Boat Quay's river trade.
For more than 150 years, people lived and worked around the Singapore River. Such heavy use of the river brought with it the problems of pollution. Quayside activities were suspended to implement the Clean Rivers Project from 1977 to 1987, and in 1983, the last of the familiar clutter of boats left the River to their new mooring off Pasir Panjang to facilitate the clean-up of the river.
In 1986, the Urban Redevelopment Authority announced plans to conserve Boat Quay as part of a master plan for conserving the history and identity of the Singapore River and its environs.
The Buildings
Two types of buildings dominate either side of the Boat Quay landscape: shophouses and warehouses, or ‘godowns’.
Shophouses, mainly of the Early, Transitional and Art Deco styles, dominate the mid-river front along both North and South Boat Quay. Most of the 19th century shophouses found in Boat Quay were initially two-storey buildings with simple façades. They provided business premises on the ground floor while the upper floors were residential quarters, mainly for the merchants and coolies. Several of the three-storey shophouses have verandahs on the third storey, reminiscent of European riverside residences with a viewing gallery.
Over time, the design of shophouses evolved into a unique architectural expression incorporating Eastern and Western features and styles - some elaborate, while others exceedingly simple. Thus, the variety of architectural styles within the same street block reflects the different influences over a period of time. The riverside shophouses illustrate the appealing scale of vernacular architecture in relation to the river and the steps of the Quay.
The first godowns were built in the 1820s and, until the advent of modern architecture, their design remained fairly constant. They had to be big, well-ventilated, dry, clean and built for easy access to the tongkangs. The early godowns represented a marriage of East and West: double-storey Doric columns, rounded arches, tall windows, entablatures and Chinese roof tiles in Palladian symmetry.
One characteristic of Chinese shophouse architecture is the use of a one-foot wide solid granite edging to the five-foot way. This feature was similarly adapted for the treatment of the Singapore River banks which were to be used as quays. Records show that as early as 1846, the river edges had already been finished in stone. Based on this existing granite edging, the rest of the promenade is paved in similar granite pieces imported from Fujian, China. To prevent the flooding of the promenade during the coincidence of high tide and high storm water flow, the overall level was raised in the late 1980s by three quay steps. However, since the completion of the Marina Barrage at the mouth of the Singapore River, fluctuations of water levels due to tidal flows have been reduced greatly.
The Legacy
In 1989, Boat Quay was designated a conservation area and after restoration and rehabilitation for adaptive re-use, the place soon transformed into a thriving entertainment and leisure hub. Today, towering buildings mark the skyline and a cluster of bumboats remain as river taxis for tourists. The conserved shophouses fronting the River, with the modern skyscrapers behind, has become one of the instantly recognisable signature skyline of Singapore.
Although the river is no longer the commercial lifeline of the counrty, Boat Quay is still a popular place for food, entertainment and an after-office hangout for the working crowd at Raffles Place. The businesses and financial houses situated on its banks have become the new hub and embody Singapore’s prosperity, which was once dependent on the Singapore River.
While their functions have changed from that of trade and maritime commerce, the shophouses and warehouses in Boat Quay still retain their beautiful façades and serve as a reminder of its rich history.
Gazetted on 7 July 1989 for conservation
References:
http://heritagetrails.sg/content/521/Boat_Quay.html
http://infopedia.nl.sg/articles/SIP_224_2004-12-20.html
URA Skyline Nov/Dec 1985
URA Skyline Sep/Oct 1986
Gretchen Liu, Pastel Portraits
Ray Tyers, Singapore: Then & Now
(Click on the above image to view the map in PDF format)
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