which once served as a kuli keng, literally “the quarters where coolies live,” provides a simple spatial template for the succession of larger homes built later. No Peranakan Chinese Malaysian is better known than Tan Cheng Lock, whose ancestral home, also on Heeren Street (pages 46–57), reveals Dutch features plus multiple layers of Chinese and Western influences. Two buildings associated with the Chee family are discussed: one was built in 1906 to memorialize Chee Yam Chuan, the notable forebear of the lineage (pages 58–63), and another the late nineteenth-century residence of Chee Jin Siew (pages 64–9) that provides a glimpse of a substantial home that has undergone only limited restoration. While each of the townhouses, shophouses, and villas in Malacca is unique, they share common aspects that can be gleaned from looking at their façades, floor plans, and ornamentation.
Singapore
Cities like London, Rome, Paris, and Beijing, and even younger cities such as New York and Singapore, are veritable museums of changing architectural styles in which old residences and other structures encapsulate in their physical forms the dynamic nature of individuals, families, and communities. Scattered homes and buildings together tell the story of each city’s evolution and, to some degree, national history in microcosm, from humble beginnings to their flourishing as commercial or governmental centers. Old residences, in particular, help tell the story of once prominent families, even the whole era in which they lived, giving contemporary visitors an opportunity to experience, within the confines of four walls, how life was lived in times past. Through the massing of architectural form and structure as well as building style, including external features and interior spaces, the tempo and character of daily life of times past can be made understandable for the curious visitor. Furnishings and ornamentation point toward what a family valued, providing windows into understanding what their hopes and aspirations for themselves and sometimes even their descendants. This is as true of the homes of the wealthy as it is for those struggling to find a place of modest comfort for their families.
Established by the British East India Company in 1819 on the site of a fishing village on an island at the tip of the Malay Peninsula, the trading post that became Singapore emerged in the nineteenth century as a strategic hub of British commercial and military power in Asia. Sir Stamford Raffles, acknowledged as the founder of Singapore, outlined early on a town plan some three kilometers wide along the sea and two kilometers inland, with priority on creating efficient docking and unloading facilities along the Singapore River. In order to forestall the emergence of disorderly settlements, a plan was proposed that created a segregated layout defined by ethnic subdivisions: a European Town, a Chinese Campong, Chulia Campong for ethnic Indians, Campong Glam for Malays, and an Arab Campong. “Campong” is the Anglicized form for the Malay word “kampong,” which means a hamlet or village. As an entrepôt that welcomed traders, planters, and coolies, Singapore subsequently thrived with the arrival of immigrants from China, India, Malaya, and elsewhere, in addition to a significant number of enterprising Peranakan Chinese from Malacca and Penang.
This view across the rooftops of Singapore’s Telok Ayer area, the heart of Chinatown, in 1870 reveals the nature of urban shophouses at the time.
In the early years, in addition to Chinese merchants and artisans, Chinese peasants arrived in increasing numbers to open areas to the north and west of the port city for the production of gambier and pepper, which, as we will see, contributed to the wealth of Chinese businessmen resident in Singapore. An 1879 survey of the manners and customs of Chinese in the Straits Settlements tallied some 200 different occupations pursued by immigrant Chinese. While the intent of many Chinese newcomers was to return to China, many settled in the new homelands. “Many did not go back to China,” according to Victor Purcell, “because... they were too poor, but some did not return because they were too rich and dared to leave their property and their interests” (1965: 254).
Many of the early dwellings inhabited by Fujian and Guangdong immigrants in the Chinese Campong were flimsy Malay-type structures raised on stilts above the marshy ground. In time, this area expanded over four phases from the 1820s into the 1920s into what today is known as Chinatown, a robust commercial and residential district of eclectic shophouses of various designs. Paradoxically, Singapore’s “Chinatown” is but a single neighborhood in a country that is predominantly populated by the descendants of immigrants from China.
The elongated Singapore shophouse, which has been called an Anglo-Chinese vernacular form by Lee Ho Yin, provided working and living space for merchants, artisans, and service-oriented firms (2003: 115). Over the years, shophouses evolved in terms of relative scale while maintaining features such as the linear covered veranda known as the “five-foot way” and the presence of at least one interior skywell. Built contiguously in blocks separated by party walls, there is a lively rhythm to the columns, pilasters, shutters, and ornamentation of the façades of adjacent Singapore shophouses, with elements that are Chinese, European, and Malay.
Early in the twentieth century, some Chinese in Singapore constructed raised bungalows along the sea coast that resemble Malay rumah panggung.
The spacious raised veranda on the home shown above is a comfortable place throughout the day.
Constructed in 1896 by Goh Sin Koh, a timber and shipping merchant, and demolished in the the 1980s, this residence was the last expansive manor in Singapore in the architectural style of southern Fujian.
The eclectic style of the multifunctional Singapore shophouses in Telok Ayer, the heart of Chinatown, was in time carried over to their cousin, the purely residential structures called terrace houses or townhouses. By the later decades of the nineteenth century, as increasing numbers of new migrants arrived from China, Chinatown became overcrowded and unhealthy. Some Chinese merchants began to consider moving beyond their place of livelihood to more residential neighborhoods that were being developed, first in areas adjacent to Chinatown and before long elsewhere across the island. Nearby areas along Neil Road, Blair Road, Spottiswoode Park, and River Valley Road, then in the Emerald Hill area, once a nutmeg plantation, and later in the Joo Chait and Katong areas in the eastern part of Singapore, all became new centers of Chinese residential life. In these areas, a mélange of building types, predominantly shophouses and terrace houses, took root in varieties that defy easy summary (pages 80–9). As other Chinese families moved to the eastern section of the island early in the twentieth century, some built raised bungalows that evoke the Malay-style rumah panggung along the seacoast. Constructed on piles with a broad veranda and abundant fenestration, the design of these bungalows allowed air to move under and through them, thus increasing comfort for those living within. In addition, the possible flooding during high tides was mitigated by elevating the residence.
Several terrace houses are presented in detail in Part Two. Among the most interesting is the multistoried Wee family residence on Neil Road (pages 90–101), which was initially built as a two-storey structure between 1896 and 1897 that was subsequently raised to three storeys. More than a century old, this residence provides not only entry into the lives of an old Singapore family but also provides a template for understanding the layout and use of a typical terrace house. In 2008, after a successful restoration, the residence was opened as the Baba House Museum. Other terrace residences in the Emerald Hill, Blair Flat, and River Valley Road areas are also featured in Part Two.
During
