Historical Sleuthing
Photo by David Bellis
The best way to learn about a city is to simply wander the streets: eventually, something will catch your attention, like an odd-looking cornice or the way a road curves, and you’ll ask yourself why it is the way it is. Idle curiosity is how I began my research on Montreal’s street signs and Hong Kong’s rooftops. For David Bellis, who runs the Hong Kong heritage website Gwulo, it was an architectural flourish that led him to wonder about three streets in Causeway Bay.
Halfway between the shopping hubs of Times Square and Sogo, on the corner of Yun Ping and Lan Fong roads, is a smart-looking, vaguely Art Deco building that serves as a hotel. At first glance, it seems to be an older postwar building that was recently restored; its architecture is in the same half-Deco, half-Modernist style that was popular here in the 1950s. This structure, though, is particularly sleek and not as utilitarian as most, with clean lines that curve gracefully around the building’s corner edge.
While admiring this corner building, Bellis noticed that all of the buildings along three adjacent streets — Kai Chiu, Pak Sha and Lan Fong roads — are identical. They’ve been modified over time, with different paint schemes and shop signs, but they all bear the same late-Deco imprint on their façades and in the elegantly curving staircases inside. Bellis did some quick research and discovered that the buildings were first occupied in 1955.
“I find it unusual to see a relatively large area apparently developed by a single developer at that time,” he writes, “and also that none have been replaced since by taller buildings.” But he didn’t know anything else, so he turned to his readers. Like a kind of benign, armchair-historian version of the notorious human flesh search engine, they coloured the drawing, revealing the history of one of Hong Kong’s earliest multi-block housing project.
It turns out that the area covered by the three streets was once a hill known alternately as East Point Hill, Jardine’s Hill and Lee Garden Hill. In the days before European settlement, its large banyan trees sheltered the village of So Kon Po; after the British arrived, the trading firm of Jardine, Matheson and Company (one of the “hongs” that dominated business in Canton, Hong Kong and Macau) built some warehouses and a large winter estate for the company’s bosses.
In 1923, property-and-opium tycoon Lee Hysan bought the land from Jardin Matheson, turning part of it into the Lee Gardens amusement park and keeping the rest with the intention of developing it with shops and apartments. Five years later, Lee was going for lunch at a private club when he was shot to death in the street; his killer was never found. It was another twenty years before East Point Hill was razed and developed with the buildings that still stand today.
Some of the area’s history is encoded in its street names. Kai Chiu and Pak Sha both refer to prominent scholars in Lee’s Guangdong hometown of San Wui (now officially known by its Mandarin name, Xinhui); Lan Fong was the name of Lee’s wife. Nearby, Lee Garden Road is known as Lee Garden Hill Road in Chinese, and Hysan Avenue commemorates the old tycoon himself.
Perhaps most interesting of all, however, is why the buildings have remained relatively untouched, even as the rest of Causeway Bay has been redeveloped with highrises and shopping malls. According to one anonymous Gwulo reader, who unfortunately did not cite his sources, the Hysan-owned company that developed the site imposed a covenant on owners that prohibited any significant deviation from its original character:
The owners of the plots were subject to covenants to “keep and maintain … European style dwelling houses of a uniform design to be completed within 18 months … of cement concrete with steel windows teak-wood flooring and servants stairs besides the main stairs … and to keep the minimum frontage of each house not less than 23 feet facing Kai Chiu Road and Pak Sha Road respectively but such houses to be without balconies or verandah … with the general specifications and in conformity with the levels to be supplied by [Lee Hysan Estate Co. Ltd.], the plans of such dwelling houses to be first submitted to and approved by [Lee Hysan Estate Co. Ltd.] whose approval shall not be unreasonably withheld.”
The plots were sold to different people. Nos. 6 and 8 Kai Chiu Road were the subject of litigation over 10 years ago – the new owner wanted to build a multi storey building and the question was whether it could do that. The litigation went all the way to the Court of Final Appeal, which confirmed that the new owner had to comply with the building scheme.
It even turns out that the graceful corner building was built just recently — it’s an exceptionally rare case of a new building that forgoes maximum revenue (it could have been a 30-storey “chopstick building,” after all) and respectfully blends in to the existing streetscape. I’m not sure if that was a voluntary decision on the part of the developer or if it was required by Hysan’s old covenant, which is apparently still in effect.
Tags: Development, Exploring the City, Hong Kong
Phil says:
For more (alleged) information on Lee Hysan’s killing, you should read Jonathan Chamberlain’s “King Hui: The Man Who Owned All The Opium in Hong Kong”. Published by Pete Spurrier at Blacksmith Books.
Cracking good read.
January 12th, 2010 at 1:28 am