One garden, many gardens

It has long been established that Singapore is a “Garden City” - or at least, aspires to be one - but what about the “Garden” as a place name in the city-state?

A casual glance of the map reveals that most “Gardens” in Singapore, as place names, are in fact housing estates or neighbourhoods. Most of them are HDB neighbourhoods, in which a cluster of blocks are given a name to bequeath them a collective identity. These neighbourhoods are spread around the island.

Some examples: In the west, we have Boon Lay Gardens in Jurong West town, Hong Kah East Garden in Jurong East town, and Teban Gardens and Pandan Gardens by Pandan Reservoir. In the north, there are Marsiling Gardens and Yishun Gardens. Around the geographical centre of the island lie Farrer Gardens along Farrer Road, and Shunfu Gardens in Bishan. In the south, there is Blangah Gardens in Telok Blangah town. In the east, we can find Marine Drive Gardens and Marine Crescent Gardens in Marine Parade. And so on.

Teban Gardens in Jurong East. Credit: Google Maps.

Farrer Gardens, along Farrer Road. Credit: Google Maps.

A handful are private housing estates - the likes of Yunnan Gardens in Jurong West, Mayflower Gardens in Ang Mo Kio, Thomson Garden Estate in Bishan, and Tai Keng Gardens in the Upper Paya Lebar Road area. And of course, there’s the famous Serangoon Gardens in the northeast of the island.

Serangoon Gardens. Credit: Google Maps.

What’s left are actual gardens. Jurong Lake has the Japanese Garden and the Chinese Garden, also the name of an MRT station, and who can leave out our only UNESCO World Heritage Site, the Botanic Gardens.

The Botanic Gardens. Credit: National Parks Board.

Historically, it was the Botanic Gardens that came first, established on its present site in 1859. Its name was taken from the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew, London.

Then we have to move forward half a century to 1915, when a lane off Kim Seng Road near the Singapore River was named Covent Garden. Again, its name was taken from London, the name of a famous West End market. The road Covent Garden was expunged by the early 1970s for an HDB estate, Covent Garden Estate, although the blocks’ addresses were 88 to 92 Zion Road. However, the estate was torn down about half a dozen years ago under the Selective En bloc Redevelopment Scheme.

Covent Garden in the 1954 street directory.

The shuttered shops of Covent Garden Estate before demolition. Credit: Singapore Lost & Filed.

The first truly Asian “Garden” opened in 1937 - Tiger Balm Garden along Pasir Panjang Road, known today as Haw Par Villa. The park was the fruit of business magnate Aw Boon Haw’s rich imagination.

Thereafter, numerous private housing estates followed, starting with Serangoon Garden from 1952, then the likes of Thomson Garden Estate in the early 1960s, and Tai Keng Gardens and Mayflower Gardens in the 1970s, among others.

Finally, the HDB neighbourhoods appeared from the 1970s as New Towns spread around the island.

***

What has troubled me is the lack of clarity as to whether some “Gardens” are singular or plural.

The most troubling of all is my very workplace - the Tiger Balm Garden.

It’s clear from historical photos that when it opened in 1937, it was a garden, no plural. That’s because the name on the Entrance Archway was “Tiger Balm Garden”.

The Entrance Archway of Tiger Balm Garden around 1938. The signboard reads "Tiger Balm Garden", not "Tiger Balm Gardens". Credit: Alamy.

And indeed, it was just one garden, which surrounded the villa known as Haw Par Villa. After the villa was torn down sometime after World War II, the garden survived.

However, as early as 1951, it began to be known as “Tiger Balm Gardens” in the newspapers. Eventually, this name - in the plural - caught on more than the original, even though the garden remained as one entity.

In 1995, when the garden was a theme park run by a private consortium, it was named “Haw Par Villa - The Original Tiger Balm Gardens”. And when Haw Par Villa MRT Station opened as part of the Circle Line in 2011, directional signs in the station gave “Tiger Balm Gardens” as an alternative name to Haw Par Villa. These acts solidified the plurality of its name. Today, “Tiger Balm Gardens” has appeared 440 times in the newspaper archives, while “Tiger Balm Garden” has appeared just 108 times.

Signs in Haw Par Villa MRT Station use the place name "Tiger Balm Gardens".

As for Serangoon Garden, probably the oldest and largest of housing estates with the name “Garden”, it was first named as such in 1952 - in the singular. But it also appeared in the plural the following year, in 1953. Today, there are almost 30,000 mentions of “Serangoon Garden” in the newspaper archives, while “Serangoon Gardens” appears almost 17,000 times. It’s both “Serangoon Garden Estate” and “Serangoon Gardens”, with landmarks such as Serangoon Garden Secondary School, and Serangoon Gardens Country Club.

Here, there's just one Garden. Credit: Serangoon Garden Secondary School Facebook page.

Perhaps, people have used - and continue to use - “Garden” and “Gardens” interchangeably because of the original “Garden” in Singapore - the Botanic Gardens. On one hand, it is one garden, but on the other, it comprises numerous gardens, so both singular and plural are correct. (It’s the same for London’s Royal Botanic Gardens.) Over time, the average person - not a stickler for little things like grammar in place names - did not see a serious distinction between “Garden” and “Gardens”, no matter where the name was applied.

Many gardens inside one Botanic Gardens. Credit: National Parks Board.

Today, the newer Gardens - mostly HDB neighbourhoods - are mostly in the plural. One exception I’ve found so far is Hong Kah East Garden. I wonder why it’s a Garden while almost all the others are Gardens. Or perhaps it doesn’t matter to the folks who had named it.

The last of Jurong Road

This past weekend, a significant event in the History of Movement in Singapore took place - the historic Jurong Road was closed on 27 September for future expungement.

Jurong Road, facing west. The base picture was taken from Google Maps, although the view is outdated - most of the Tengah Forest north of Jurong Road has been cleared for Tengah town, leaving a narrow strip of trees next to Jurong Road.

In the 19th century, Jurong Road was laid down to connect what is now Upper Bukit Timah Road to the Sungei Jurong (now Jurong Lake) area. Over decades, the trunk road was lengthened in stages, until it met the sea at Tuas Village in the early 1930s. In all, its length was around 10 miles. Jurong Road became a major trunk road serving the rural southwestern part of Singapore Island.

(Around 1961, the trunk road west of the junction with Boon Lay Road - Jalan Boon Lay today - was renamed Upper Jurong Road to make it easier for the postal and utility services to locate addresses.)

Urban redevelopment arrived in Jurong, starting with industrialisation in the 1960s. Bukit Batok New Town came up in the 1980s, causing much of the eastern part of Jurong Road to be expunged. A small stretch next to Upper Bukit Timah Road survives as Old Jurong Road today.

Old Jurong Road, at the junction with Upper Bukit Timah Road. Credit: Google Maps.

Also, in the 1980s, the extension of the Pan-Island Expressway (PIE) to the west of the island permanently separated Jurong Road from Upper Jurong Road. More of Jurong Road was expunged, leaving a 2.5-km stretch just north of the PIE - the stretch which closed this past weekend.

Meanwhile, a small part of Upper Jurong Road has also survived, mostly next to SAFTI Military Institute.

Upper Jurong Road, next to SAFTI Military Institute. Credit: Google Maps.

It is clear that in the Jurong area, the PIE has replaced the Jurong-Upper Jurong trunk road as the primary channel for motor vehicles. What is left of Jurong Road was a time capsule of an era when trunk roads served the rural parts of Singapore - but no longer.

Throughout modern Singapore’s history, a persistent theme is that of old channels of Movement being replaced by new channels. Jurong Road will suffer the same fate - it will make way for viaducts of the upcoming Jurong Region MRT Line, and road connections between Tengah town and the PIE. As reported in the news:

Motorists and residents of the upcoming Tengah town in the west will have direct access to the Pan-Island Expressway by 2027.

The Land Transport Authority (LTA) will be calling a tender for new connections which will include a flyover, and which will also give residents in Jurong town another link to the PIE.

The project involves building new roads and modifying existing ones.

It includes a 0.5km dual four-lane flyover along PIE near the exit to Jurong Canal Drive, a road junction below the flyover that will connect the PIE, Jurong Canal Drive and Tengah Boulevard leading to Tengah town, and widening of the PIE between Hong Kah Flyover and Bukit Batok Flyover.

The LTA said yesterday the tender will be called by the end of this year.

To facilitate the construction of the new flyover and a surface road junction, a 1.5km stretch of the PIE will be moved northwards onto a part of Jurong Road.

With this, traffic along Jurong Road will be re-routed to the PIE before joining Bukit Batok Road...

Credit: The Straits Times.

I’ve explored Jurong Road several times over the last few years, the most recent trip being a couple of weeks ago, after I read about the road’s imminent closure. Right to the end of its existence, the road has remained a single-lane dual carriageway, mostly without pavements or curbs; to the south, a buffer of grass and trees next to the PIE; to the north, what is left of the secondary forest of Tengah after mass clearance for Tengah town. I will miss the rustic peace and quiet walking along the road, and I will miss the company of the tall, mature trees lining the road.

I hope some of these mature trees will survive the sweeping changes to the landscape.

SBS Transit Bus Service 174. After Jurong Road's demise, 174 will ply the PIE instead.

I will also miss the bus stops along the road - some of them are themselves time capsules, bearing the names of old roads and tracks which had gone out of use and / or been expunged. Examples include Track 18, Track 22, and Hong Kah Circle. With the closure of these bus stops, the last physical reminders of these lost roads will disappear too.

"aft Track 18"

A bus enthusiast did a great job of filming the road and the bus service - SBS Transit’s 174 - which plied it until the night of 27 September, including the last buses to traverse the road in both directions. The YouTube video is here.

A YouTube user then commented on the video:

Jurong Road, it has been a good ride, and thank you for your service.

House of Maxwell

Urban renewal of Singapore’s historic old city began in the 1960s. This involved tearing down age-old, crumbling, one to three-storey buildings - some with heritage value exceeding a hundred years - and replacing them with larger, taller buildings which allowed for more intensive land use. Entire neighbourhoods were razed; a new city rose above the rubble of the old. This is detailed in my book Jalan Singapura.

The thing about urban renewal in Singapore is that it never truly ends. Because of 99-year-leases and the open market, buildings which were erected in the 1960s and 1970s as urban renewal projects are gradually being put on sale, to be sold and torn down for newer, even taller buildings, before their leases run out. Again, my book gives some examples; a prominent urban renewal landmark which was recently demolished to much sadness was Rochor Centre.

Rochor Centre undergoing demolition in 2018. Credit: Bob Tan, CC BY-SA 4.0.

One example to be added to the soon-to-go list - Maxwell House, at 20 Maxwell Road, the junction of Maxwell Road and Tras Street.

Maxwell House. Credit: Cushman & Wakefield.

Maxwell House, which has been around since 1971, is up for collective sale with a new mixed-use commercial and residential project or hotel possibly taking over the site.

Owners of the 13-storey building at 20 Maxwell Road have set a reserve price of $295 million, sales consultant Cushman & Wakefield said yesterday.

The block comprises mainly offices and sits on a trapezoidal island site of about 41,801 square feet (sq ft), with views from all four sides of the building.

The site has a plot ratio of 4.3 under the Urban Redevelopment Authority's (URA) Master Plan 2019.

But Cushman & Wakefield noted that the URA said in January last year that it would support a mixed-use commercial and residential development with a 30 per cent higher plot ratio of 5.6, and a gross floor area (GFA) of 234,086 sq ft.

This is subject to a rezoning. Another caveat is that the commercial part of the new project must not exceed 20 per cent of the total GFA.

The allowable building height has also been increased to 21 storeys...

Maxwell House sits at the fringe of the Central Business District but is also near the conservation shophouse enclaves of Tanjong Pagar and Chinatown and within a few minutes’ walk of Maxwell Food Centre and the Tanjong Pagar and Chinatown MRT stations.

The upcoming underground Maxwell MRT station on the Thomson-East Coast Line is expected to be completed in 2022...

The public tender closes at 3pm on Nov 12.

Originally, Tras Street ran from Maxwell Road in the north to Enggor Street in the south, and was lined by shophouses.

The Tanjong Pagar area in 1966. Tras Street is shaded blue.

This changed at the end of the 1960s when urban renewal arrived. A cluster of shophouses at the Maxwell Road end was torn down for an urban renewal project, Maxwell House, named after Maxwell Road. The length of Tras Street in front of the shophouses was also expunged for a pedestrian walkway, cutting the road back to the Cook Street junction.

The Tanjong Pagar area in 1975. Tras Street is shaded blue; Maxwell House is shaded yellow.

Maxwell House opened in 1971. The following is a Straits Times advertisement dated May 1971, advertising the impending completion of the project:

Some of Tras Street’s shophouses next to Maxwell House were eventually conserved, and they stand to this day.

Maxwell House and Tras Street, looking south. Base picture credit: Google Maps.

Even though Maxwell House is a non-residential office block, its architecture is reminiscent of multi-use residential complexes constructed around the time, such as Rochor Centre and People’s Park Complex - a podium block of three to four storeys, then at least one tower block rising above the podium block. It is this class of post-independence, urban renewal projects that is ironically threatened by urban renewal today. When will Maxwell House go? We’ll find out in November.

Maxwell House, seen from Cook Street. Credit: Google Maps.