Answers to Old Singapore Quiz (7):

1. What is the name of this place in Singapore?

A: Toa Payoh Town Park

2. What was its old name?

A: Toa Payoh Town Garden

3. What was it popularly used for in the 1970s?

A: Outdoor wedding photography

4. What is the name of the eatery located there?

A: The Oasis

5. Where was the eatery formerly located?

A: Kallang Basin

The following paragraph was extracted from Wikipedia:

“Toa Payoh Town Garden was partially closed in 1999 to make way for a temporary bus interchange. After the new Toa Payoh Bus Interchange at the HDB Hub was completed in June 2002, the temporary bus interchange was converted to a landscaped park. Toa Payoh Town Garden was subsequently renamed as Toa Payoh Town Park.”

So it looks like the garden had been rebuilt.

Toa Payoh Town Garden was one of the earliest public parks to be built in an HDB new town. According to this blog, the beautifully landscaped Toa Payoh Town Garden was completed in September 1973 for the SEAP Games. (In comparison, the Chinese Garden was completed in 1975.)

Toa Payoh Town Garden was a very popular venue for outdoor photography shoots with wedding couples at that time. My brother did just that in 1976:

The photos are a bit faded. My brother’s suit was maroon, a favourite colour of choice for bridegrooms at that time. (The masks are not part of the wedding attire though. They are something I made my brother and sister-in-law wear to protect their identities. But frankly, I doubt anyone can recognise them 33 years later even if they are unmasked. :p)

Note: You can see the restaurant building in the background in the right photo above. The building has been renovated and it is now occupied by The Oasis restaurant which serves Taiwanese porridge:

Previously (before May 2008), the restaurant was at Kallang Basin (in the round structures in the photo below). As correctly pointed out by Polestar, the left portion of the restaurant in the photo below was also a popular place to hold Chinese wedding dinners in the 1970/80s:

Here are more photos of Toa Payoh Town Park:

You can read more about Toa Payoh here and here.