I've no idea where yesterday's photo was taken but I know that today's photo shows part of Telok Ayer Street because the street name is on one of the buildings. You won't find this scene now – these buildings are long gone. I was trying to place the cross street – the one I was standing on when I took this photo, but I couldn't. In the wider shot below you can see the unique facade of the singtel building about a block to the right and behind. That would place this intersection where the high rise occupied by Citibank now sits. Center background is a concrete and glass building that has also been replaced in the 23 years since I took this image.
While researching this location, I learned that 110 years earlier I would have been standing in Telok Ayer Bay. Then Telok Ayer Street was a coastal road, one of the first streets in Singapore and the main landing site for Chinese immigrants which is why chinatown grew up to the west of Telok Ayer Street. For many years until the late nineteenth century this was the main commercial and residential street in the city. It also served as a center for the Chinese slave trade.
The land I was standing on was part of the reclamation projects of 1878 – 1885. Land reclamation continues today.
I like the dog sitting patiently in this first photo. It looks like he's guarding the two boxes of pears. In the wider view further below, office workers head back to the highrises behind me after lunch in one of the many cafe's that used to dot this neighborhood. The trading heritage of Telok Ayer Street is more evident in the second image.
An interesting feature in the second image is the roof line of the three-story yellow building behind the two-story yellow building – the one with the rounded roof apex. If you take a Google Street View drive south along Telok Ayer Street just south of the intersection with Cross Street you see this roof line and rounded apex repeated in the remaining structures.
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