Wednesday, June 23, 2010

Then and Now – Marine Police Station @ Empress Place


As many of you correctly pointed out, the building featured in my previous Old Buildings Quiz is the Marine Police Station located next to the Cavenagh Bridge at Empress Place. Above is a scan from the 1963 street directory showing its exact location. Interestingly, my 1981 street directory shows a food centre on this same site.

I have also done a ‘Second Shot’ so you can compare the Jacques' photo with a present day shot from the very same spot that Jacques' father must have stood in 1952. I am wondering, where was I when that shot was taken back in the year that I arrived on this earth; in my mother's womb? KK hospital? or back in my kampong home.? And yes Icemoon; it was taken from across the river. And I even try to imitate your 'precision photography by capturing a bit of the concrete at the lower right corner of my photo.

The photo below is also from Jacques Lahitte. You can clearly see the Marine Police Station.


You can also see the Marine Police Station in this 1954 photo from the National Archives of Singapore collection.

Finally, thanks to Peter Chan you can see the empty land where this building was demolished to make way for the construction of the North-South MRT line as described by Peter here.

9 comments:

Icemoon said...

Very interesting Chun See. You can throw a shrub into the river, but don
t get caught for littering.

fizlikwilam said...

In fact, the tallest structure in the region seems to be the clock tower in Victoria Theatre and Concert Hall, formerly known as Town Hall or the Victoria Police Memorial Hall.Surrey submitted to the police station Egham not suitable for most purposes - to remember a terrible sentence? and can be closed.
Egypt holidays

Anonymous said...

Hi fizlikwilam,

Are there special deals for the Egyptian tours you are promoting, to the readers of this blog?

Lam Chun See said...

Actually in photo no. 3, you can see Singapores' tallest building (Cathay) in the distance.

Victor said...

This has nothing to do with the post but with the 2nd comment here by Fizlikwilam. It seems to have been planted by a spambot. Why? Because the first sentence was actually lifted my related post here. And the 2nd sentence made no English sense.

This is the 2nd time I notice this kind of thing happening. The 1st time was in my post in Yesterday.sg titled Traditional Coffeeshop Snacks of the 1960s. In that comment, the spambot lifted these sentences which I wrote in the same post: "Peanut candy. You must have very strong teeth to eat this as it is hard as a rock. Be careful, if you break off a piece of “peanut”, be very sure that it is not one of your molars." It has since been deleted either by the Yesterday.sg's auto-anti-spam feature or the site's Admin.

One thing I must say, the spambots are certainly getting smarter. But don't expect Fizlikwilam to be smart enough to answer you, Anonymous of 28 Jun 10. Its sole purpose here is to link and advertise its holidays website.

It is not easy to spot the spam unless you are the writer of those sentences that have been replicated.

Victor said...

Another example of spambot at work here. It lifted the following 2 sentences from my post here. "I thought to myself, "Oh no! Could someone have stolen the Carved Ceremonial Pole?" If so, being an alert and responsible citizen, I must report the theft to the National Heritage Board."

This spambot is smart because the comments are related to the post on which they appear and they do not look like spam to most people.

Alright, I better stop here. Otherwise my comments may be treated as spam as well.

peter said...

victor,

when eve ri tried to goto your site, another window opens and brings me to this "Anchor ......" site. It's irritating.

Lam Chun See said...

Thanks for that clarification, Victor. That was quite enlightening.

Actually, I have been deleting these 'comments' one by one. But these latest ones sounded like genuine comments; or at least part of it; so I thought better leave them alone to be safe. Anyway, as long as they don't lead to some porno site, I am not too particular. But personally, I never click on suspicious links like these.

So dear readers. If you see 'comments' like these; don't bother to respond. If I have time I will delete them.

Tom said...

Chun See I agree with Victor ,Ok the adverts and comments are innocent just now what about in the future they may not?