Victoria Harbour in 1915
When I look at old maps of Montreal, I marvel at how entire neighbourhoods have vanished and streets renamed. What’s interesting about old maps of Hong Kong, by contrast, isn’t what has disappeared, but what has appeared. The above map, which dates back to 1915, is recognizable in its depiction of Hong Kong, Kowloon and Victoria Harbour, but upon closer examination, you you realize just how the shape of the city has changed since then.
On the Hong Kong side of the harbour, Causeway Bay is just that — a bay — and most of present-day Wan Chai still hasn’t been reclaimed from the harbour. Kowloon side, the changes are even more dramatic. Hung Hom is separated from Tsim Sha Tsui by a bay that has since been filled it; looking at Hung Hom’s position on the shore gives you an idea of why this older neighbourhood exists in the first place. Similarly, it’s interesting to see now-landlocked Yau Ma Tei as a waterfront district.
Perhaps the most revealing thing about this map, though, is the way it demonstrates how harbour reclamation was already well underway by 1915. Causeway Bay and most of the Kowloon waterfront had already been dramatically reshaped by landfill. Connaught Road, running west from Admiralty to Sai Ying Pun, was once a waterfront promenade, but it became an inland road in 1889 when the adjacent water was filled. That wasn’t Hong Kong’s first major reclamation project; a few decades earlier, the waterfront ran along present-day Des Voeux Road.
Tags: Hong Kong
