Queen's Road Central

Arthur Hacker paves the history of one of Hong Kong's busiest roads.

The Hong Kong Hotel (seen on the left) was the colony's first real luxury hotel.

When Lord Palmerston, the British Foreign Secretary, heard that Captain Elliot had founded a British colony in Hong Kong in January 1841 he was not pleased. He wrote an angry letter to Elliot in which he described the new colony as "a barren rock with hardly a house upon it." He had expected something rather grander. Hong Kong Island had no towns and no roads. The small land population lived in a few remote and isolated fishing villages, the largest being Aberdeen which in Cantonese is called Heung Gong Tsai (little Hong Kong). Elliot named the original British settlement Queenstown. It was later renamed Victoria after Britain's young queen. It is now known as Central District. Footpaths connected the villages. One of these rough tracks ran along the northern shore of Hong Kong Island. Viewed from the hills, this wiggly little track, which was used as a towpath by local junk captains, was said to resemble the drawstring that Chinese ladies tied around their waists. This is why, according to Dr Eitel, an early Hong Kong historian, it was known as Kwan Tai Lo, which he translated as Petticoat String Road. In 1841 the Royal Engineers laid a new road on top of the towpath. With a bewildering lack of imagination they named this new highway Main Street, but in March 1842 the road was officially renamed Queen's Road in honour of the British monarch. In the Victorian era many important buildings stood between St John's Cathedral and the Clock Tower at the junction of Pedder Street. On the corner where the Landmark is today, (15 Queen's Road Central), stood the Hong Kong Hotel, the first luxury hostelry in the colony. Nearby was the first headquarters building of the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank. It had a massive octagonal dome that stood 100 feet above the ground. A new headquarters building was erected in 1935 that was the largest building east of Suez at the time. The present bank headquarters at 1 Queen's Road Central was designed by Sir Norman Foster and covers the site of the original bank and a bit of the old City Hall, a beautiful building designed by the French architect M. Hermite. This cultural centre was financed by public donations and housed a museum, a library and the Theatre Royal, where Queen Victoria's son, Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh, watched a naughty play performed by the Amateur Dramatic Club called Notting Hill. The Prince had opened the City Hall a couple of days earlier. He was Hong Kong's first royal visitor. On the opposite side of the road, below the cathedral, was another exquisite building called Beaconsfield Arcade. It only came to be built because a Mr Emmanuel Belilios had donated a thousand pounds for the erection of a statue to Lord Beaconsfield. Lord Beaconsfield politely declined the offer, so Belilios named the arcade after his hero. Belilios is best known for using a camel to commute between the Peak and Central. With the opening of the Peak Tramway, the beast became redundant and in a fit of melancholia committed suicide by jumping over a cliff. Another interesting building was the Ice House that stood at the junction of Battery Path and Ice House Street. In spite of its name, it did not manufacture ice. The ice was harvested from icebergs by The American Company and shipped to Hong Kong. The crop arrived in great blocks and was stored in the Ice House. At one time the company was owned by a dubious entrepreneur called George Duddell who ran an illicit craps game in the building. He was also a dishonest auctioneer who once illegally sold a ship to himself at a ridiculously low price... and got caught. In spite of this there is a street in Central named after the crook.
A postcard of the old City Hall that was opened by Queen Victoria's sailor son Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh, in 1869.
Looking down Queen's Road Central from Battery Path in the 1860s. towards the Clock Tower. Duddell Street is on the left.	The dome of the 1886 Hongkong and Shanghai Bank stood 100 feet high. Dent's Fountain can be seen on the right.

All images property of Arthur Hacker.

For more from the History Man himself, Arthur Hacker is the author and illustrator of "British Hong Kong: Fact and Fable". Published by Lanyon Lanyon, and available from www.paddyfield.com