The Supreme Court building:The Supreme Court is one historical building. It stands on the site of the old Hotel de L'Europe. You know the posh place opened in a Coleman-designed bungalow in 1857... magnificently rebuilt in 1907 in the Edwardian Baroque style and was in close rivalry with the Raffles Hotel until it was forced to close down in bankruptcy in 1932.
But that was not the end. The Government comes along and purchased the land some years earlier. They took possession in 1934, and demolished the luxurious hotel to start work on the last of the great colonial-era classical buildings in Singapore - the Supreme Court. Well, what a waste. You know I could definitely make good use of that hotel.
The first pile was driven on 2 April 1936. Alas! The construction programme was affected by delays in the delivery of steel due to shipping congestion and England's re-armament programme. Well, construction stopped and wow it was such a bore!
Built at cost of $1,750,000 under the direction of Frank Dorrington Ward, chief architect of the Public Works Department, it was declared officially opened on 3 August 1939 by Governor Sir Shenton Thomas who singled out the architect for public praise. Whew! I am really out of breath.
A souvenir programme was produced to commemorate the opening ceremony. Unfortunately, only a copy survives and it can be located in the National Library. It is repleted with facts about the building. If only I could get hold of similar souvenirs, I could be rich! According to it, over 30 different contracts were given out and two and a half million bricks were used.
The main walls and cornices of the corridor were finished in gypsum plaster of the "first class" workmanship. However, superior quality of the finish was ironically the result of Sino-Japanese hostilities, which forced Chinese plasterers from Shanghai where they had adopted European methods to come to Singapore to work.
The building was classical yet modern in the accepted style that was then widely employed by many different practitioners for civic structures around the world from Shanghai to Washington D.C. Its modern qualities include the simplified wall surfaces, the spare use of ornamentation and the strict functional expression of the space. Talk about being modern, maybe they should look at today's buildings.
There was however, something very interesting to note. There were dramatic difference between the front and back blocks. The front was strongly conceived, pompous and grave while the back was, I am sorry to say, bare and simple. This was rather ironic as it represents an image of the soon-to-be-discovered myth of Fortress Singapore.
Another interesting thing was that Mr. Ward developed no fewer than eight variations on the design, all incorporating elements from the classical vocabulary, which were rendered in water colour. Several of the designs attempted to match the farcade of neighbouring City Hall. Such a copycat!
These artist's impressions still exist in the Public Works Department together with the detailed drawings of the design that was finally approved. The final design is an interesting amalgamation of British architectural themes. So you architects out there may want to have a glimpse of these designs.
The front farcade strongly recalls the British country house. The dome is a copy of the dome on St. Paul's Cathedral in London and the sides resemble Italian Renaissance palazzos while the rear has, in contrast, the feel of a utilitarian, even factory-like, building.
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