Hello visitors. Din here and back to lead you with another tour around the Fullerton Building, (which is my beloved Ti's favourite monument in Singapore)... Thanks for all the comments given. I am pleased that you had really enjoyed the journey.

As promised, we will now cross the bridge to have a closer look at the area around Fullerton. But before that, there's one monument that is too good to miss, that is the Victoria Memorial Hall, which is located before the Cavenagh Bridge, in Empress Place..

 

The Victoria Theatre and Concert Hall is a complex of two buildings and a clock tower joined together by a common corridor and located in the civic district of Singapore.

The memorial hall was designed by Major Alexander Murray and the Public Works Department, with additional input by R. A. J. Bidwell from an architectural firm, Swan & Maclaren to harmonise it with the neighbouring town hall. The town hall was also renovated, thus creating a unified appearance by 1909. In 1906, the signature clock tower was added. Standing between the two buildings and connecting the them with a common corridor, it rises to a height of 54 metres, and is topped by a timepiece donated by the Straits Trading Company. The tower is built on an axial line with the Anderson Bridge nearby.

On 6 February 1919, which marked the Centenary of Singapore's founding, a statue of Stamford Raffles by T. Woolner was moved from the Padang to the front of the memorial hall. The statue was complimented with a new semicircular colonnade and a pool.

In the lead up to World War II, the memorial hall was used as a hospital for victims of bombing raids by the Japanese forces during the Battle of Singapore before their successful occupation of the colony. During the occupation, the buildings themselves escaped major physical damange, although the colonnade was destroyed, and Raffles's statue moved to the National Museum. At the end of the war, the statue was returned to its original site in 1946. The hall also served as the venue for Japanese war crime trials.

In 1954, the memorial hall underwent renovations by Swan & Maclaren, and on 21 November, it was the venue where the People's Action Party was founded. The town hall was also heavily renovated and air-conditioned as the Victoria Theatre. In 1979, the memorial hall was renovated again to accommodate the Singapore Symphony Orchestra (SSO), upon which it was renamed as the Victoria Concert Hall. Additional works up to the 1980s added a gallery to the Concert Hall, adding seating capacity and enclosing the second storey balconies on the front and back facades with glass.

The Victoria Theatre and Concert Hall was gazetted as a national monument on 14 February 1992.

I tried my best to capture as similar position as the archive photo of the 1920s. And the view of the Hall is blocked by the bushes along the National Museum. In comparision, significant differences are the pavements and roads. The photo was taken about 10 metres away from the Cavenagh Bridge.

Are you ready to cross the bridge?  Lets move further....

There's not much significant difference from here in comparing both photos except there are more trees planted now, which block the view of the monument. Even there is still trishaw pullers pulled by apeks (chinese uncles) now, but equipped with hi-fi sound equipment attached to their trishaws. Me and Ti had always recognise one trishaw pullers whom will roam around the Boat Quay, on our night-outs. He will be playing not Chinese music but top hits like Backstreet Boys or evergreen like The Carpenters, aloud... eventhough he might not understood what the music is all about. Hahaha..

The area around the river Boat Quay is a favourite jogging place for locals and expats alike. Standing still in the middle of the cavenagh bridge to snapped the photos, I could feel the vibration of up and down motion, whenever someone jogged crossing the bridge.

On our next journey, we will move to the end of the bridge towards Fullerton Buildinga and Maybank Tower.