Heritage Trails is a five-part series where I’ll be going on little expeditions to the heartlands as well as to some pretty unexpected heritage sites in Singapore , based on the heritage trail brochures I have collected, which you can get from the MICA building at Clarke Quay or from community centres around the areas.

For my third Heritage Trail, I’m setting out to explore Queenstown, the first real self-contained community named in commemoration of Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation in 1953.

The faded light blue tiles and geometrically styled buildings of the former Queenstown Cinema and bowling centre are to me, probably the most definitive features of the Queenstown area.

Quite a legend within the topics of public housing in Singapore, Queenstown was the first planned ‘satellite town’, a self-contained community with everything residents would possibly need apart from housing, such as social facilities like schools, markets, food centres, medical centres, and even entertainment areas.

This concept was carried out by the Singapore Improvement Trust (SIT) under the British colonial government, which was formed in 1927 with the main intent of fulfilling general improvement works and later took on the duties of solving Singapore’s growing housing issues back then.

The trail starts ‘in the heart of Queenstown’ – the town centre, now a lonely place which used to be pretty much one of the most popular places to be from the late 1960s to the early 1980s.

I was there on a Tuesday afternoon and there was literally no one there, except maybe like three people at a seafood restaurant beneath a furniture shop, both of which have taken over what used to be a bustling wet market, built in the 1960s, right in the middle of the Queenstown Town Centre.

In the past, people from all over Singapore would gather in the Queenstown area, which had three cinemas with frequent sold out screenings. There was also Tah Chung, the trendiest shopping place in the heartlands which sold everything – clothes, electronic goods, household stuff and appliances- everyone shopped there in the day and visited crowded streets of pasar malams in the evening.

The lights, crowds, sights and excitement slowly faded by the mid-1980s when other satellite towns started developing around Singapore, such as Ang Mo Kio, Toa Payoh etc. where younger people grew up and started moving to other parts of Singapore. Whatever is left of the former lively town centre is just a really quiet, old residential area with a largely greying population of residents, and some nostalgia they have of their once bustling town.

Some once-glowing neon signs of the first two cinemas built in Queenstown, originally planned to be situated at Dundee Road in 1958, the two cinemas were moved to the town centre by HDB, for the convenience of the residents.

In 1965, the cinemas were opened and started screening Taiwanese movies and Kungfu films which were immensely popular among local audiences. The cinemas also doubled up as hosting facilities for the neighbouring schools’ various events, such as graduation ceremonies.

In its heyday, the former Queenstown Cinema and bowling centre enjoyed unrivalled competition with all-rounded in-house facilities – a 1,715-seat cinema, an 18-lane bowling centre, a restaurant, a cafe, and even a private lounge which few entertainment buildings could match up to. It was the place to be for youths, especially students from nearby schools who would flock there after school hours and even on weekends.

The whole place was closed down in 1999, succumbing to newer cineplexes, newer, trendier malls and the ever-changing demands of cinema-goers. I think these buildings are now completely vacant because many parts of Queenstown are currently undergoing redevelopment.

The Commonwealth Cooked Food Centre just behind the cinemas was where movie-goers went to for food after a show. This hawker centre was a little like a collective of independent hawkers who used to peddle food in pushcarts travelling around the Queenstown area. In the early days, these hawkers even provided makeshift foldable tables and chairs for their customers since there weren’t any permanent ones they could conveniently eat at.

Now closed, this was the last cooked food centre in Queenstown in its original building. A foodie’s treasure trove, this place was very well-known for local fare such as our famous Char Kway Teow, Queenstown Popiah with handmade popiah skins (which I actually remember eating!), traditional roast duck and meats, dim sum, and Malay food. I can’t help but feel a little sad to know that it’s going to be demolished.

Moving on to the next site with an empty stomach and an ironically heavy heart, we’ll proceed to Margaret Drive, just behind the food centre.

What used to be a former Queenstown Polyclinic and a former dental clinic is now a dormitory. This road was named after Princess Margaret, the younger sister of Queen Elizabeth II. Polyclinics are government-funded medical centres where Singaporeans can receive subsidised healthcare conveniently located within the heartlands. This was especially relevant and beneficial to the senior citizens.

During the 1980s, Queenstown had became a largely mature estate, and there were a significantly higher proportion of senior citizens living in the area as compared to other estates in Singapore. The Queenstown Polyclinic was opened by then Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew on 13 January 1963, almost fifty years ago, starting out as a combined clinic providing outpatient, maternal and child health care. The clinic expanded its service to dentistry and merged all these services to form the polyclinic and dental clinic.

With regards to architecture, the clinic’s distinctive open-concept was
brilliant, considering its construction during an era of air-conditioning being quite a luxury. It had thoughtful pavilion-like structures which allowed for optimised airflow and ventilation which kept the surroundings naturally cool. The clinic had served the residents for over 40 years and had since moved to its current location at Stirling Road from December 2007.

The road along Margaret Drive is lined with trees and plenty of grass. There used to be fruit trees and reptiles like snakes which appeared attimes when it rained. Till today, some part of nature is still around, we can also find many different species of birds, some squirrels, big lizards, even these tadpoles I found in the drains!

Known as ‘Xin Lu’ to residents in the 1960s, Margaret Drive holds most of the major facilities of Queenstown such as the clinic, a library, schools, even places of worship and now demolished residential blocks which used to line both sides of the road.

We’ll be taking a closer look at these facilities and their facets of their heritage in next week’s continuation of Heritage Trails: Queenstown (Part II). Stay tuned!

PS. While looking for some research online, I found this blog about the Queenstown area which was really relevant to this trail, so you would probably like to go check it out.