Row over the dead
By CHOONG KWEE KIMThe Star, Thursday, June 26, 2003
A columbarium project smack in the middle of the Millionaire’s Row in Penang has drawn enough flak to make the dead turn in their graves, reports CHOONG KWEE KIM.
AN auspicious golden arowana symbol and a feng shui calendar rest on the table of Datuk Nazir Ariff’s sea-facing office, as he speaks dejectedly about a controversial columbarium project looming opposite his restored heritage building on Jalan Sultan Ahmad Shah, Penang.
The prominent businessman had enthusiastically invested in Penang’s dream of George Town becoming a Unesco World Heritage Site by restoring his mansion to reap the promised bountiful returns in tourism ringgit and increased property value.
Alas, that dream has become a nightmare in the shape of an imposing three-block columbarium-cum-religious institution of nine and 10 storeys that will soon sprout around the derelict heritage building opposite the former Shih Chung branch school to be restored and redeveloped by Stamford Raffles By The Sea Sdn Bhd.
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An artist's impression of the controversial three-block columbarium project at Jalan Sultan Ahmad Shah, Penang. The existing Shih Chung building in the centre will be restored. |
“I respect the state government’s decision but I will definitely never again get involved in the restoration of any heritage building in Penang because it is a thankless job and in the end, it is not appreciated anyway,” says the Escoy Holdings Bhd chief executive officer who is also past president of the Penang Heritage Trust (PHT).
Opposite his mansion is a quiet old Protestant cemetery that last had a burial in 1894. Nazir can live with that since it is “inactive” but he cannot accept it being used to justify the approval of a new columbarium to be filled with a whopping 300,000 urns at the so-called Millionaires’ Row that falls within the heritage conservation zone.
“The Millionaires’ Row was originally the home to pioneer merchants, rubber planters and tin miners who had turned Penang into a vibrant Pearl of the Orient.
“It is the best part of the island that is by the sea and within the city area,” he says.
The late Honda tycoon Tan Sri Loh Boon Siew’s mansion is also located along the road, formerly known as Northam Road, along with many other stately mansions while further down at Upper Penang Road (UPR) is the majestic E&O Hotel, The Garage and other heritage buildings now restored for adaptive reuse as entertainment outlets and restaurants.
Back in 2000 when the Rent Control Act was repealed, Nazir and his friends decided to turn their 1926 mansion, acquired from the family of a tin-miner’s son, Leong Yin Kean, into a corporate office-cum-restaurant that has come to be admired as a shining example of good corporate initiative in heritage conservation.
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Datuk Nazir Ariff and his friends restored this seafront mansion in 2000. He is unhappy that a columbarium is joining the neighbourhood. |
“I consulted a feng shui master who said the location was good except for the cemetery but since it was not active, it was not so bad,” says Yeoh.
To deflect the negative qi (energy) of the cemetery, he says corrections were made to shift the front door facing Jalan Sultan Ahmad Shah to another entrance facing Farquhar Street apart from other minor changes.
But after having seen the approved design of the three-block columbarium project opposite, his worst fears are confirmed.
“It is loud, garish and so huge that the original Shih Chung building will be dwarfed by the new structures.
“Maybe I will need to consult a feng shui master again to see how to avoid this but it is so massive that you really can’t ward it off,” he says in despair.
He strongly believes that buildings like a columbarium emit negative yin energy that is not good for other businesses in the vicinity.
“Businesses might probably fail, they may become abandoned and left to rot and die,” he says.
He does not see any good coming out from the columbarium project in terms of better patronage at his restaurant during the festive Qing Ming (Chinese All Souls’ Day) when families visit cemeteries and columbaria to pay respects to the dead.
“Qing Ming is a time when families bring their own food to offer to the dead and then take home to eat.
“They won’t come to my restaurant for the Western and Mediterranean food but they may probably come to use our car park,” he says wryly.
Nazir and his tenant are among the aggrieved neighbours like the Taiwanese owner of the mansions rented by Canon Marketing, the Loh Boon Siew estate, the Gan Chai Leng residence and the Marina Mirage Hotel who are directly affected by the columbarium project and had openly voiced their objections.
On behalf of the business and residential community of the area, Loke Mun Kit of Marina Mirage Hotel had also sent a letter of appeal to Deputy Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi tasking for a relocation of the project and its approval to be revoked.
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The Shih CHung building, built before 1893, is located in a prestigious seaside neighbourhood that is being promoted for tourism. Many of the area's residents believe that the building of the columbarium will undermine the effort. |
Checks showed the four neighbours included a nondescript building rented by a used-car dealer, the Protestant cemetery, the St Joseph’s Home that shares the same compound with the St Francis Xavier’s Church and a building rented out as a warehouse.
It comes as no surprise if none of the four objected, yet the authorities chose to ignore the growing voices of dissent from the serious investors and residents opposite the project due to the fact that they are separated from the site by a road.
Loke says they are not opposing or against the construction of the columbarium but are merely emphasising that its positioning at Jalan Sultan Ahmad Shah is inappropriate and should be relocated to the outskirts of town or at a hillside.
He says MPPP’s current ruling of referring only to owners of property adjoining or sharing a common boundary is not appropriate for this type of controversial building.
“MPPP should also consider the impact to others by writing to property owners who are opposite, adjacent and around the proposed site.
“This columbarium will have a long-term negative effect on the image of the present prestigious commercial, financial and seafront tourist belt of Jalan Sultan Ahmad Shah right from the E&O Hotel to Gurney Drive,” he says.
Loke’s company had initially planned to build a 23-storey hotel opposite the Shih Chung building but the plan is now dashed by the columbarium project that would make a hotel “suite room with a columbarium view” unappealing indeed. Loh Nam Hooi, a repr esentative of the Boon Siew estate, also raises his concerns about traffic congestion and insufficient car parks.
“The government has been promoting this area for tourism and when you suddenly have this columbarium here, it is really very unsuitable with the environment,” he says.
Loh Teng Hong, managing director of Hotel Malaysia at Penang Road, says businesses at Upper Penang Road are doing quite well with the tourism promotion but the buildings and hotels there only have a total of about 1,000 car parking lots which is insufficient.
“With 300,000 urns at the columbarium, I wonder how the traffic is going to be here during Qing Ming,” says Loh who is also the Penang Hoteliers’ Association vice-chairman.
Even the area’s Padang Kota assemblyman Teng Chang Yeow has his reservations about the project that has incurred the ire of many voters.
Teng, who is also Chief Minister Tan Sri Dr Koh Tsu Koon’s political secretary, says he had expressed his views and reservations to the state authorities and had also suggested that the developer scrap its earlier proposed condominium plan and build an international convention centre instead.
“I have done my part and since the council has approved the columbarium project, I leave it to the landowners to decide on their next course of action,” he says.
Dr Koh had said last year that the state was working on a conservation management plan that must be “administratively implementable, economically viable, socially acceptable and culturally compatible”.
But the approved columbarium comprising three blocks laid out in a U-shape partly blocking the Shih Chung heritage building in the centre, has been criticised as an eye-sore that is incompatible with the surroundings and a mockery of heritage conservation.
The Shih Chung building, built before 1893, was originally the residence of prominent 19th century figure Cheah Tek Soon after whom Tek Soon Road was named.
PHT council member Lim Gaik Siang says Cheah’s only daughter Cheah Liew Bee married Goh Say Eng, a strong supporter of Dr Sun Yat Sen’s revolutionary movement, and Goh eventually sold his properties one by one in support of the revolution. The building then fell into the hands of rich local merchant Tye Kee Yoon and it was used as a hotel, appearing in old postcards as Bellevue Hotel and also as Raffles-By-The Sea.
By the 1920s, it was leased to the Government English School and later became the Shih Chung branch school after the war.
In 1993, the Tye trustee was said to have sold it for RM9.5mil to the Malaysia Vegetable Oil Refinery Sdn Bhd, one of the major shareholders of Stamford Raffles By The Sea Sdn Bhd.
So, it comes to pass that this historical building will soon become a columbarium to be called The House of Remembrance.
To other investors of the heritage potential in the vicinity, they are waking up to the reality that heritage conservation does not pay so long as the state authorities do not have the proper means to ensure its sustainability for everyone.
The best of feng shui strategies offer little help without the support of a state government that is clear and transparent about its conservation management strategies towards achieving that dream of a world-class, sustainable living heritage site.
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http://ssquah.blogspot.com/2008/05/shih-chung-branch-school-penang.htmlMonday, 19 May 2008
Shih Chung Branch School, Penang
In case you don't known, the Shih Chung Branch School is an old, abandoned building that had seen better days.
It was - still is - an imposing building. It was originally a unique Anglo-Chinese mansion belonging to Cheah Tek Soon (Tek Soon Street was named after him, so he must have been someone quite important in old Penang) in the 1880s.
The building was the first five-storey residence in the Straits Settlements and local Hokkiens called it goh chan lau (five storey bungalow). Later, it was named the Chinese Residency when Tek Soon’s brother lived there in the 1900s. Much later again, the Tye brothers turned it into the Raffles-by-the-Sea hotel in the 1910s. Again, much much later, it became the P’i Joo Girls’ School (named after another old towkay, Leong Fee or Liang P'i Joo), the Government Girls’ School and finally, the Shih Chung Branch School.
About six or seven years ago, the building was at the centre of a storm of controversy when some association wanted to turn it into a Buddhist centre-cum-columbarium. I guess nobody would have minded a Buddhist centre there along Northam Road but a columbarium? Nobody wanted that in their midst, protests were raised and the idea was dropped like a hot potato.
Here are various views of the building's exterior:
And finally, the location of the Shih Chung Branch School as seen through the eyes of Google Maps. It's the isolated building in the lower left quadrant of the picture:
Glimpses of colonial Penang
by Alan Teh Leam Seng
THE northern intersection of Penang Road and Jalan Sultan Ahmad Shah (formerly Northam Road) is a good spot to begin a walkabout of colonial George Town.
Indeed, Northam Road, the city’s first residential suburb, is still known to many locals as Millionaire’s Row, where stately and majestic European-style bungalows were once home to the rich sons of the island.
Local Chinese referred to it as Ang Mor Lor (European Road) because of the many ang mor lau (European-style bungalows) standing amidst lush gardens complete with tennis courts, stables and elaborate driveways.
Here too is the final resting place of many of Penang’s founding fathers. In use from 1789 to 1892, the cemetery houses both Protestant and Roman Catholic graves. Those of Captain Francis Light, James Scott (Light’s trading partner), Reverend R.S. Hutchings (founder of Penang Free School) and Quintin Dick Thompson (brother-in-law of Stamford Raffles) are in the Protestant cemetery. The last burial was that of Cornelia Van Someran in 1892.
You can also find the grave of James Richardson Logan, the editor, writer and publisher of the 27 volumes of the Journal of the Indian Archipelago and Eastern Asia, which were also called Logan’s Journals, from 1847-1859. Together with his elder brother, Abraham, they took over the Pinang Gazette and encouraged public opinion to end Indian rule in the Straits Settlements. This resulted in the historic Transfer of 1867 by which the Settlements obtained self-rule. Transfer Road thus was named to commemorate the event.
Among the European graves are 12 Chinese graves dating from the 1860s to the 1880s. These are the graves of Christian Hakkas who escaped to Penang after the failed Taiping Revolution in China.
Army officer Thomas Leonowens, whose widow, Anna of Anna and the King fame, was also buried here after succumbing to apoplexy.
From the cemetery, you can see the few reminders of Penang’s early suburban villas. One imposing building, a unique Anglo-Chinese mansion, was once the Shih Chung Branch School. When fully constructed in the 1880s, it was Cheah Tek Soon’s residence. It was the toast of the town as it was the first five-storey residence and local Hokkiens called it goh chan lau (five storey bungalow).
Subsequently, it was named the Chinese Residency when Tek Soon’s brother lived there in the 1900s. Later, the Tye brothers turned it into a hotel, Raffles-by-the-Sea in the 1910s.
Much later, it was converted into the P’i Joo Girls’ School, the Government Girls’ School and finally, the Shih Chung Branch School.
Nearby is the house of the late Loh Boon Siew, a tycoon who made his fortune by importing and selling Honda motorcycles in the 1960s, and two unassuming hotels with a rather notorious past.
According to Penang Heritage Trust guide Theresa Capol, 55, the infamous striptease dancer Rose Chan used to perform at one of the hotels, called Hotel Gallant.
“Across the road is Waldorf Hotel, where American soldiers stayed when on leave during the Vietnam War. At that time the number of servicemen ‘tourists’ were numerous and the hotel had to add on an additional wing,” she says.
From here, walk towards Farquhar Street and you’d be greeted by the famous Eastern and Oriental (E&O) Hotel. In 1927, this “Premier Hotel East of The Suez” boasted of 100 rooms, 40 of them with adjoining bathrooms, hot and cold running water, individual telephones and 842ft seafront, the longest at that time.
It’s located strategically at the intersection of Farquhar Street and Penang Road. The imposing building transports visitors back to the old world grandeur of the East India Company and one can almost expect to see colonial planters sipping their stengahs and enjoying their tiffin curry under high ceiling fans.
In the past, it was well patronised by colonial administrators, planters and wealthy locals as well as personalities like Noel Coward, Rudyard Kipling and Somerset Maugham. Elegant suites have been named after these great writers.
Even now, the elegant E&O, with its Moorish minarets, spacious domed lobby and sweeping seafront, has managed to retain much of its grace and charm.
It was first built in 1885 and underwent massive renovations just before the turn of the millennium which turned it into a unique and elegant five-star property complete with 101 British India-styled suites and a diverse range of exquisite dining facilities.
The Sarkies Brothers – Martin, Tigran and Arshak – from Isfahan in Persia, became the foremost hoteliers of the East by operating the Strand in Rangoon, the Raffles in Singapore and the E&O and Craig Hotel in Penang.
It was Tigran who first leased a large compound house at 1A, Light Street. On April 15, 1884 it opened as the Eastern Hotel.
Later, the Sarkies Brothers acquired the adjacent Hotel de l’Europe which they subsequently renamed as the Oriental Hotel.
But running two separate hotels within a short distance of each other proved uneconomical, so the brothers decided to merge the two. However, they realised that travellers were already familiar with the names, so they renamed it Eastern and Oriental Hotel.
The hotel is 20 kilometres from the Bayan Lepas International Airport and a stone’s throw from the ferry terminal that connects the island to the mainland. From the hotel, you can take a short walk to Fort Cornwallis, the City Hall and the Penang State Museum. A small upmarket mall called The Garage is located right across the road while a row of shophouses close by sells reasonably priced antiques.
Dining outlets at E&O include the Sarkies Corner which has a colonial, Straits-style coffeeshop setting and serves a local-international buffet or a la-carte. Farquhar’s Bar, a surviving sample of the colonial era with its dark woods and leathers, serves great pub fare. The bakery is a little nook specialising in breads, pies, pastries and great coffee.
According to its communications manager Elizabeth Dass, the E&O will be celebrating its 151st Anniversary this year. For more details, contact the E&O at 04-222 2000, fax: 04-261 6333, e-mail hotel_info@e_o_hotel.com or access www.e_o_hotel.com
Did the journalist demote the PM on his/her own initiative?
ReplyDelete"Deputy Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi" heehe I'm sure it was just a mistake =P
June 26, 2003 lah!
ReplyDeleteOH! you post so backdated wan! i thought maybe lately they've stirred it up again so you're posting like a 2008 article LOL
ReplyDeletejeffery, why are you 5 years late :P
didn't see it before. just saw it now.
ReplyDelete:P
it struck me that a 5 storey building back in the 1800s would have been really something since all the buildings then were only 1 to 2 storeys high.
5 storey buildings now still give me the :O feeling, regardless of residential or commercial building. something about 5 storeys give that feeling of grandeur yet not OTT a classy feely kinda way hehe
ReplyDeletemuseums! i was in ACM the other day and i had a lotta fun! 5 storey building too, i believe xD
ReplyDelete:D
ReplyDelete