Waterloo Road

I am flabbergasted - used to live there...and they are sytill there and occupied by HK Govt employees..!

Hi Brian,

There are some more photos of Nairn House at:

http://gwulo.com/node/15029/photos

If you can add any more they'll be very welcome. Here's how:

http://gwulo.com/node/2076

Regards, David

The cake shop was Cherikoff. We used it quite frequently, as we lived across the road in Waterloo road just off the photo on the left hand side in the late 1950s.  Lovely photograph. Things got more lively when the flyover was built.

Nairn House are the high rise white buildings for Government employees. The clock tower would be the China Light & Power office building on Argyle Street opposite from Nairn House.

Wow, I lived around the corner on the left in Dunbar Road from 1960 to 1963. I don't remember the cake shop but I do remember a pub called the Golden Keg where my parents used to drink!

I used to get the number 7 bus to school at St George's from the bus stop on the right!!

memories flooding back....

If this is Waterloo road looking south towards Nairn House, then this is just before Argyle Street. The building on the left, at least one or two, were owned by Kowloon Hospital. I lived there (90 Waterloo Rd) briefly after i was born, as my father was a young doctor at the hospital. I moved back to the area when i started kindergarten (122 Waterloo Road @Prince Edward), and walk this stretch of road everyday to Pui Ching School unitl Form 4. The rock face on the right leads up to Kadoolee Hill, and around the corner to the right would be the CLP building. There is NO commercial establishment along this stretch. The best cake shop is some distance BEHIND where the photographer stood: Coffee House, in the same build i lived in, but on PE St. There was a cake shop on Waterloo Road past the Argyle St intersection, and i believe it was a branch of Maria's; but it came much later, like early 70s - definitely not when this picture was taken. Cherikoff was at that time in TST on Cameron St (which i lived on also, in between my stints on Waterloo Rd); and later on Nathan Rd; it was never in the Homantin area.  All three, and Maxim's, had memorable cakes and pastries! Thanks for bringing back the memories!

I remember Coffee House!! In the late 1960s and early 1970s, it was on the south side of Prince Edward Rd., just east of Waterloo. Joan Campbell's London School of Ballet was in the same building.

It was not just a cake shop, it was a restaurant as well. One wing was for fine dining, the other was more like a café, and between the two was the cake shop.

I wonder if anyone has photos of Coffee House?

I don't recall a full menu at Coffee House but their Club Sandwich is memorable; so are the delectable fruit tarts, cream puffs and eclairs. It was a favorite hangout for celebrities and liaisons because of its dim lighting and banquette seats inside. You may be conflating Coffee House with the Captain's Table, which was in the same building but at the corner of Waterloo & PE. The latter was more a high-end grill room with fairly decent steaks (i remember their compound butter for some reason). It was established in the early 70s, in the mode of Amigos near Happy Valley (which only just recently closed for good!) My family lived at 122 Waterloo Road from 1964-ish to 1976, and I attended Pui Ching from kindergarten through Form 4; so we frequented both those establishments. 

There is a picture of Coffee House (behind the big tree) and Captain's Table (on the right, with the timber/stucco exterior) at the end of this article about Kowloon Tong. I believe the building was demolished in the early 80s. 

Captain's Table -- I remember that name too!

I remember the fine-dining section was to the left when you entered the cake shop.

Here's another article about 'The Coffee House'.

When we moved to the apartment on Prince Edward Road, Coffee House was across the street from our place. The building that housed Coffee House (and later Captain's Table) was called Henry's Mansion. Across the street on Waterloo Road was the apartment complex known as Paul's Mansion, fronting both Waterloo Road and Prince Edward Road as well. St. Teresa's Church was across the street from Paul's Mansion.

I also recall another restaurant a few blocks away on Prince Edward Road (away from Waterloo Road) called Gallano's where we would go for coffee as well as fine dining. I remember there was a small courtyard for seating as well.
In the opposite direction, on Prince Edward Road, there was a Cherikoff restaurant with a bakery and a full menu.

To the right of the photo of Nairn House I remember the row of a few small shops that included a bakery which could have been Maria's or Delite bakery.

This brings back a lot of memories!!  I was a student of Carol Bateman's at her school of ballet that was housed in the basement of the Helena May Institute on Garden Road.  I remember Joan Campbell who was associated with Miss Bateman, and the names of some of the main students from Miss Bateman's class - Raymond, Kiki and Jean Wong and Pearl Chan who later opened their own ballet schools.

I remember the productions that the school held at the Lee Theatre that I was a part of -  the first being Mother Goose.  We also performed dances to The Swedish Rhapsody and Rustle of Spring in another production, and my own solo performance as a Portuguese Fisher girl.

angie-r, your posts made for interesting reading.  I taught for Mrs Campbell in her Carole Bateman School at the Helena May for many years.  The student Raymond you mention, later had a tiny ballet studio in one of the rooms of his flat on King Kwong Street, Happy Valley.  I used to go there to buy ballet shoes which he imported from Japan.  His students were all Japanese, in which Raymond was fluent.  Coincidentally, Mrs Campbell had a ballet studio called London School of Ballet, above the Coffee House on Prince Edward Road, where I also taught in the early 80's.  The coffee house fare sustained us through many a long afternoon and evening! 

Lynne, thanks for the information about Raymond.  I think he was the only male dancer at the school when I was there.  Didn't Jean Wong have her ballet school in Henry's Building at one time?  This might have been before Mrs. Campbell opened her school there.

I mentioned Gallano's on Prince Edward Road in my previous comments, but believe the actual name was Cafe Galano. I see on the internet that there is a Cafe Galano in Causeway Bay and I am curious as to whether there is any connection between the two.

. 

Jean Wong's ballet school was in our building at 122 Waterloo Road (Paul's Mansion), on the third floor, i think. On the ground floor (in the 70s) were Honeymoon Bridal Salon/Studio, Tony's Hair Salon, and, later, Captain's Table. On the upper floors were the ballet school and a health spa. In the end, there were only two residential units left in the building by 1975, and we and the other family emigrated to US/Canada within a year of each other. We are still in touch!

On Mike Cussan's photo, i early commented that there was not a bakery near that location (Waterloo Rd and Argyle St) but my 93-yo mother seems to confirm a Cherikoff there off to the right, after the bus stop shelter (for #7/#3 buses), at the end of the 50s and early 60s. But the low-rise building it was in was demolished by the late 60s. 

Interesting that Paul's Mansion housed Jean Wong's ballet school as well as the other salons you mentioned.  I left Hong Kong in November of 1974 but cannot recall those places being there.  I knew a family who lived there when the building was relatively new and pristine, and strictly residential.  I think it was built before Henry's Mansion?  It's been several years since my last visit back to Hong Kong and it was nostalgic and also sad to see the changes around Kowloon Tong and the places where I lived.  Suffolk Road was this quiet side street off Waterloo Road with lovely old houses when we lived there.  The house itself went through several transformations - from a senior home to a school to a movie studio, and Prince Edward Road is now lined with high rise buildings.  

Paul's Mansion - the building opposite the St Teresa's Church, at the corner of Prince Edward Road West and Waterloo Road was at 99 Waterloo Road. It was purely residential with car parking on the ground/street level as far as I can remember when we lived there in the 1980s. The building is called 'Lucky Court' today. Was there another building at 122 Waterloo Road with the name Paul appendaged to it? 

It’s such a joy to go on these time travels with all of you.

I lived in the area around Waterloo and Prince Edward, from the early ‘60s until my family moved away in the mid-‘70s. In my young life, this was pretty much my world. I went to school here; I had my hair cut across the street from St Teresa’s Church at the Odeon barber shop (I think that’s what it was called); I got my (nearly) daily dose of afternoon treats from The Coffee House; and, about a year before I left, I began taking piano lessons with a teacher who lived to the east on Prince Edward, not far from St Teresa’s Hospital.

By then I was old enough to walk to her house by myself, though I remember being vigilant, dodging cars coming out of driveways. She lived in a low-rise building – there were fewer high-rises on Prince Edward back then – and I always remember the wonderful aroma of someone preparing dinner as I approached her front door.

She probably lived just between Short Street and the hospital. On the way home, I could see my school to the north, up on a hill; it was still the old building, with its distinctive dome. I often regret not having taken any pictures of it, before it was torn down two to three years later.