If you remember last week’s Heritage Trails post on my Queenstown expedition, here’s part two of it! Heritage Trails is a five-part series where I’ll be going on little expeditions to the heartlands as well as 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.

The Queenstown Branch Library was opened in 1970 at a cost of $595,000. This was the first branch library in the suburbs, apart from the only library, which was the National Library at Stamford Road then.

Queenstown Branch Library, 1970s, image from the Heritage Trails booklet, courtesy of the National Library Board.

In the 1960s when reading was a luxury and literacy wasn’t commonplace, the community library in Queenstown was quite a milestone in Singapore’s advancing living standards, in regards to education, literacy and information technology.

For example, in 1987, when the National Library began computerising, Queenstown Library was the first to roll out computerised services.

The Queenstown Baptist Church which was established in 1962, had its origins in the Southern Baptist Convention of the United States. The significance of churches here lies in how Queenstown was originally planned to be a self-contained town, with everything accessible and to the convenience of its residents, even for places of worship.

As Singapore became more sophisticated, it turned to fulfilling the needs of its minority, such as children who have developmental or intellectual disabilities, and thus in 1970, special education in Singapore was set up in the form of the Lee Kong Chian Gardens School, the first of its kind here.

Today, including the Lee Kong Chian Gardens School, there are five MINDS (Movement for the Intellectually Disabled of Singapore) schools around.

In the 1980s, a couple of schools here also began providing educational programmes for younger children with special needs, called Early Intervention Programme for Infants and Young Children (EIPIC). These schools were brought together by the then Singapore Council of Social Services (now known as National Council of Social Services) in 1987 and called the Margaret Drive Special School, which became independent in 1992, and was renamed Rainbow Centre and still continues providing its services today.

Former Archipelago Brewery Company, image from the Heritage Trails booklet, courtesy of Loo Oi Heng.

This was the very first commercial brewery in Singapore, which was established along Alexandria Road by German businessmen in 1931. It produced Anchor Beer, which was a lot more popular than Tiger Beer in those days. The main plant where brewing was carried out, is where Anchor Point now stands but operations have been relocated to Tuas since 1990.

Block 45, 48, 49 Stirling Road

First blocks of flats built in 1961, Neighborhood II along Stirling Road, image courtesy of the Housing and Development Board.

The role of these blocks of flats along Stirling Road is significant in the marking of the historic transition from the SIT to the HDB era, and were the very first blocks built by the HDB in 1960.

Former Baharuddin Vocational Institute (BVI), undated, image courtesy of Institute of Technical Education.

This school was set up to teach older students manual and applied arts in the late 1960s to the early 70s, in response for Singapore’s economic industry’s need for a workforce trained in design so as to remain competitive among our neighboring countries who were also developing at the time.

Across the street from Commonwealth MRT is a familiar landmark of Queenstown since the 1960s, also known as Faith Methodist Church. This plot of land was first bought in 1964 when it was surrounded by farms and swampland. The original buildings were demolished in 2002 to make way for the current structures which now host two congregations- the Queenstown Chinese Methodist Church and Faith Methodist Church.

This is the Shuang Long Shan Wu Shu Ancestral Hall, a 40.5 hectare of land, originally bought in 1887 by the Hakka Clan, Ying Fo Fui Kun as a burial ground for kinsmen from Jia Ying prefecture in Canton, China. A village had formed here in the early 1900s, made up of mostly Hakkas, and some Hainanese, Cantonese, Malays and Hokkiens. The burial land was acquired for public housing along with the development of Queenstown and the village was resettled in 1968. Today, 1.89 hectares of the original land has been retained to house the relocated graves and the original ancestral hall.

Setron (Singapore Electronics) Ltd, a familiar icon at Tanglin Halt Industrial Estate in the 1960s, image from Ministry of Information, Communications and the Arts Collection, courtesy of the National Archives of Singapore.

Moving on to an empty piece of land along Tanglin Halt and Commonwealth Drive, we revisit what used to be the former Tanglin Halt Industrial Estate. With the decline of industrial activities, factories here closed down by the late 1980s due to Singapore’s shift in economical direction from manufacturing to services.

Now that many things have changed in Queenstown as it is undergoing even further redevelopment, hopefully to restore its once glorious and lively past, it is still a lot of fun exploring bits and pieces of the vibrant histories some empty spaces used to hold.

Be sure to look out for next week’s Heritage Trails, where we’re visiting Jalan Besar, one of the first roads to be built in Singapore!

If you would like to go on a heritage trail yourself or with a few friends, feel free to pick up the heritage trail brochures at community centres or the MICA building near Clarke Quay, or simply visit the Education and Outreach Division at NHB. Please also visit their website at http://heritagetrails.sg.