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.

The origin of Woodbridge

Singapore used to have a pretty place name, Woodbridge.

I am not being sarcastic here. By itself, the name “Woodbridge” is quaint, and evokes visions of a rural countryside, with dirt tracks running to a wooden bridge over a rushing stream. Unfortunately, the name has been irrevocably tainted with decades of stigma associated with mental illness.

The Institute of Mental Health (IMH) used to be known as Woodbridge. It began in 1928 as the Mental Hospital to the east of Yio Chu Kang Road, and was renamed Woodbridge Hospital in 1951. As part of institutional reforms for the treatment of mental issues in Singapore, the ageing complex was demolished in the early 1990s for a new one slightly to the northeast in Buangkok Green, and was accordingly renamed IMH.

Woodbridge Hospital in 1965. Credit: Ministry of Information and the Arts Collection, courtesy of National Archives of Singapore.

A ward in Woodbridge Hospital, 1965. Credit: Ministry of Information and the Arts Collection, courtesy of National Archives of Singapore.

Credit: Ministry of Information and the Arts Collection, courtesy of National Archives of Singapore.

IMH today. Credit: Google Maps.

There was also a road named Woodbridge. In the 1960s, part of historic Yio Chu Kang Road next to Woodbridge Hospital was realigned, to straighten the trunk road. The new channel retained the name Yio Chu Kang Road, while the original one was renamed Jalan Woodbridge, after the hospital next to it.

The 1966 street directory, showing Yio Chu Kang Road next to Woodbridge Hospital. Jalan Woodbridge, in blue, used to be part of Yio Chu Kang Road. However, Yio Chu Kang Road was straightened, and a new channel constructed, shaded yellow. The yellow road remains part of Yio Chu Kang Road today.

However, because of the stigma, the road was renamed Gerald Drive in 1998, after neighbouring Gerald Crescent. With that, the place name Woodbridge passed into history.

Gerald Drive today. Credit: Google Maps.

What gave rise to the place name Woodbridge, though?

While the name could have been of a European personality, the first thing that comes to mind is an actual wooden bridge in the area. If so, where was this bridge, and what became of it?

I might have found the location of this bridge.

In 1998, in his interviews with the National Archives of Singapore, retired rubber plantation manager Douglas Hiorns shared the following tidbit:

... (We) call it Jalan Hwi Yoh but it was very much a dirt track. And that petered out on after the Pang Kio, which is the Woodbridge and that it kind of just dispersed...

Jalan Hwi Yoh was a rural road running west of Yio Chu Kang Road. According to old maps of the area, it did run over a river, the Sungei Tongkang, a tributary of the Sungei Punggol, presently Punggol Reservoir. After crossing the Sungei Tongkang, Jalan Hwi Yoh indeed “petered out”, from a metalled road (marked by lines) to a footpath (marked by dotted lines). It seems that the crossing over the Sungei Tongkang was Pang Kio, or the original Woodbridge, the wooden bridge.

In 1961, Jalan Hwi Yoh - shaded blue - ran over the Sungei Tongkang, in the red box. According to Hiorns, this could have been the original Woodbridge. Base picture credit: National Archives of Singapore.

Today, the Sungei Tongkang has been canalised, but its course through the site of the original Woodbridge has more or less remained the same. After comparing old and present-day maps, I can confirm that the area has been redeveloped into an industrial park in Serangoon North. The location of the original Woodbridge still has a bridge over the canalised Sungei Tongkang - this time, Serangoon North Avenue 6 runs over the unnamed, modern, concrete bridge.

The new Woodbridge - a concrete bridge carrying Serangoon North Avenue 6 over Sungei Tongkang. Base picture credit: Google Maps.

The bridge carrying Serangoon North Avenue 6 over the Sungei Tongkang, facing north. Credit: Google Maps.

This is the new Woodbridge!

(I also find it quite amusing that an industrial building next to the new Woodbridge is occupied by Iron Mountain, a storage and information management services company founded in the United States. It seems fitting that an iron mountain lies next to a wooden bridge...)

So, the original Woodbridge is now part of the neighbourhood of Serangoon North. The site of Woodbridge Hospital has been redeveloped into the HDB flats of Hougang Avenue 9 and Hougang Street 91. These are more examples of the geography of place names changing or shifting over time because of urban redevelopment, as I’ve described in my book Jalan Singapura.

Of course, as with many historical narratives, there is a postscript, containing elements which do not fit in with the rest of a seemingly complete story.

In this case, Hiorns’ account does not really sync with the news report of the official naming of Woodbridge Hospital in 1951:

Chinese residents in Yeo Chu Kang have a name of their own for the Singapore Mental Hospital. They call it the “Woodbridge Hospital” because a wooden bridge used to be over the stream which runs by the side of the hospital.

Government has, therefore, to use the same name.

Hiorns’ location of Pang Kio, or Woodbridge, along Jalan Hwi Yoh doesn’t fit the description of “over the stream which runs by the side of the hospital”, as the Sungei Tongkang is quite some distance from Woodbridge Hospital.

One possible explanation is that Hiorns was correct, and the news article had printed wrong information about the location of the wooden bridge. Another explanation is that Hiorns was wrong, and the news article was correct, which meant the original Woodbridge was closer to the hospital. A third explanation is that both Hiorns and the news article were correct - and that there were two wooden bridges, both named Pang Kio or Woodbridge, the one closer to the hospital giving its name to the hospital. After all, I’m sure there were hundreds of wooden bridges all over Singapore.

So many possible paths in the landscape of History. I suspect more revelations to come.

This is the nature of History to me - fascinating, revealing, frustrating, and never a closed book.

All in a name

In the course of my research, I stumbled upon this set of reflections by retired rubber plantation company manager Douglas Hiorns, which he shared with the National Archives of Singapore in 1999. According to him, the origins of old place names were more from the ground up than top down:

So this crown reserve was what was known as Jalan or Lorong Puah Bak Tiong. So when houses were built on the roadside, it was natural to happen that the road was also known as this Jalan Puah Bak Tiong. But nobody wanted to have this name. So after some time, it was renamed and became Plantation Avenue. And to this day it is known as Plantation Avenue. So I think that one has to realise that in naming of roads, the government doesn’t come along and say, “Oh, we are going to call this Jalan Kayu or we are going to call this Lorong Buangkok.” The name would obviously grow from the inhabitants.

Plantation Avenue in the 1960s. Credit: RAFSA Collection, courtesy of National Archives of Singapore.

(Puah Bak Tiong is Hokkien for “Cemetery of Burst Stomachs”. The area which later became Plantation Avenue off Yio Chu Kang Road once had a cemetery for victims of infectious diseases, hence the graphic name.)

For instance there is one named the Tongkang Pecah, Lorong Tongkang Pecah and I can imagine that many years ago, you might have one Malay who lived around there meeting another Malay he’d not seen for many years and he’d say, “Oh, where do you live at present? I haven’t seen you for a long time.” He said, “Oh, I live along the road there.” “But where do you mean, where?” “Well, you know there’s just by my house there is a ‘tongkang pecah’, a broken barge, well I live there.” So, he’d probably call him Ahmad “tongkang pecah”. The Ahmad who lives in “tongkang pecah”. So gradually the area will become known as Tongkang Pecah. Then when the government goes around with their signboards up goes Tongkang Pecah.

(The area called Tongkang Pechah used to be by the Sungei Punggol. Of course, it has long disappeared, and it is now part of Sengkang town, served by Sengkang West Avenue.)

Broken barges no more - the area once known as Tongkang Pechah is now filled with the towering blocks of Sengkang West Avenue. Credit: Google Maps.

So that is how many of these names come into being, just by local usage. And it’s not that the name is given to it by the government, not at all. The names grow up with the people and they grow out of the locality and this is the interesting thing about it. Even Bras Basah Road, wet rice road. Obviously why, because the rice coming to Singapore, the grains would be spread out along the road to dry, so hence the name. And this is part of the history, the very names themselves suggest the trades, the people, the buildings, the activities that take place.

Hiorns was born in 1925, so he’s probably passed on by now - if so, may he rest in peace.