Current condition
Demolished / No longer exists
Date completed
Date closed / demolished
Not sure what this building was yet, but I've created this Place to gather information. This building stood on the south side of QRC, between Wyndham Street and Zetland Street.
Dates are guesses:
- Completion, guess 1862: Originally this land was a steep hillside (Pedder's Hill) which ran right up to Queen's Road Central (see this 1846 sketch). That hill was demolished in the 1860s, and this photo shows the Pedder St Clocktower and this building under construction. I've guessed this building was completed at the end of 1862, the same date as the clocktower.
- Demolition, guess 1920: Asiatic Building was completed on this site in 1924.
An 1889 map (Plate 3-2, Mapping Hong Kong) shows that after Pedder's Hill was demolished, I.L. 619 was created, running along the south side of Queen's Rd Central between Wyndham St and Zetland St. It's not clear whether a single building ran along the full length of the lot, or if the lot held several buildings.
I'm assuming that the same building(s) stood on the land from the 1860s to the 1920s, but there may have been two or more generations of building here.
Previous place(s) at this location
Photos that show this Place
1860
1862
1863
Comments
Size / BAT
Thanks for the extra photos of this building.
The 1901 map shows that at that time the lot IL 619 was occupied by two buildings. The western building, the one we're interested in here, was divided into five parts, numbered 24 / 26 / 28 / 30 / 32 Queen's Road Central.
Then the 1919 photo of the Peace celebrations shows the company name "British American Tobacco" across the front of the building, so it looks as though they had offices there. It also suggests that although the building was split into sections, they could be combined to form larger offices.
Agra Bank
The first building at this location was the Agra Bank which opened in 1862