Retail Market, Yau Ma Tei [????-1956]

Submitted by Admin on Fri, 09/02/2022 - 12:22
Current condition
Demolished / No longer exists
Date closed / demolished
(Day & Month are approximate.)

I'm not sure when this was built, but it is shown on a 1920 map, marked "Retail Market".

Two other markets are shown in Yau Ma Tei on that map: the original Yaumati Market on Market Street, and a small Vegetable Market on Waterloo Road that would become today's wholesale fruit & vegetable market.

In the 1950s, the previous Retail Market and the Yaumati Market were merged into one new market on this site. Page 141 of the Hong Kong Annual Report for 1956 notes:

One retail market in Reclamation Street was demolished and is being replaced by a new market of modern design, which will also provide for the market stalls hitherto accommodated on the site of the old Yaumati Market.

Page 175 of the 1957 report notes the completion of the new market:

In November one new market building was opened in Yau Ma Tei to reprovision the two old markets of the area - one of which had grown so old that it had collapsed.

Tags

Photos that show this Place

c.1930
1930s
????

Comments

Between 1911 and 1914, a strip of land was reclaimed off Reclamation Street (KML's 29-31). The Public Works report for 1914 refers:

129. Reclamation opposite K.M.L.. 29-31, Yaumati.---This work, together with the slipway for the Repairing and Coaling Yard for Government Launches, which was constructed as an extra work under the contract, was completed in November. All liabilities were discharged before the end of the year. The area reclaimed (9.05 acres) lies to the westward of Reclamation Street and extends from Saigon Street to Public Square Street. 

Couldn't find anything in the PWR, so the market was likely built between 1915 and 1920