Gloucester Building / Gloucester Hotel [1932-1977]

Robert - many apologies for not replying sooner but I only just came across your comment!

I will post a few photos here of the Gloucester which I got from a book my parents had about various cities in the Orient. 

I hope they will be of interest 

The Gloucester was renamed the Matsubara Hotel during the Japanese Occupation ...

Hi Nikki,

Just curious to find out when did your Mom live in Alexander House? Cause I was born there and moved to Gloucester Building in the late 60’s or early 70’s (can’t remember exactly the year). Then we moved to P&O building across the street and then to Star House in T.S.T. in the early 80’s. I am sure that we might have ran into each other back in Gloucester Building.

Gordon

Hello Nona,

Thanks for your comment and photos of Gloucester Building. If you have any other photos from the time of the Japanese occupation during WWII please let me know. I remember Gloucester Building well from my childhood when I used to go to the arcade where my aunt worked at a travel agency and to have some refreshments! Thanks again. Robert

I'm trying to find suitable photographs of H.K taken just before and during the Japanese occupation from 1941-45 for my book The Farthest East which is basically a narrative about my family during the War Years. I think that the photo that you have on your Piu-Ulski site or one similar to it with more of the Peak would be perfect for the cover. Please let me know if you would consider that? Thanks. Robert Jones  

Hi Robert

Would be happy to help - please just let me know which photo you're referring to!  Probably best if you contact me via my blog (pio-ulski.com) and we can take it from there 

Cheers!

Thanks Nona. Will take a look at Pio-Ulski.com and will be in touch. Best, Robert

Hi Gordon,

Sorry about the slow reply. My mum said she was too young to remember when did she live in Alexander House... 

Nikki

In January 1946, my grandfather Edgar de Chaffoy opened a small shop for the company Perla del Oriente in the Gloucester Building in Central, with an office above. The shop sold watches, crystal, and other luxury goods. He had worked for the company before the war, but as a manager of the cigar factory in Mong Kok.

The Hong Kong Land Investment and Agency Company, Ltd. published a booklet "In Far Eastern Waters" in 1933,  describing the Gloucester Building as originally envisioned as being businessmen's "bachelor flats" on the upper floors, with commercial offices and retail shops below.  However, the booklet states that when completed, the building's plan was altered to allow women, and function more as a hotel for wealthy tourists, as well.  This may have come about due to the deterioration of economic conditions at the time.

Interestingly, the management bemoans the fact that there is no air service to Hong Kong, and the colony may be reached only by ship.  

I seem to recall that in the late 60s and early 70s there ws a restaurant on the uipper floor of the building which was called the Cosmo Club. Richard Hughes and other writers and newspaper men dined here regulalry and at great length

SEE : Cosmo Club - The Foreign Correspondents' Club, Hong Kong

“One of the first meeting places was the old Gloucester Building lounge and later the ground-floor cafe" (1960s)

The October, 1932 edition of "The Far Eastern Review" extolled the benefits of Hong Kong's newly-completed Gloucester Building with its large four-faced clocked tower, at that time dominating the landscape of the central business district.

 Verbatim extract from  'The Far Eastern Review':

Hongkong Tells Time by Telechron

PROMINENT in the downtown section of Hongkong, near the busy docks of its spacious harbor, a new and attractive building has been erected in the recent past, containing apartments, business offices, and on the ground floor, shops and arcades. Rising from the front corner, 135 feet above the street, a clock tower gives the time of day to dwellers of the city. It is visible for a long distance out in the harbor that teems with ships and small craft, and can be seen from the residential section in the hills whose rise is so abrupt from the business streets that an inclined railway is utilized for transportation.

The Hongkong Land Investment Company, owners of this, the Gloucester Building, and its architects, Leigh & Orange of Hongkong, in taking upon themselves the rendering of a time service for so wide an area, took also an accompanying responsibility. It was of highest importance that the four great dials, on the four sides of their tower, should not only be always in accord as to the hour and minute but should point the correct time, so as to be depended on for accuracy and so that clocks and watches of all the city could be set to them as a standard.

The timepiece chosen was the Telechron, an electric clock that has made itself popular in homes and business places of many parts of the world because it never has to be wound, calls for no periodic attention, and tells the time of day with remarkable and consistent accuracy. Each of the four dials on the Gloucester Building is 10 feet in diameter, and each has a little motor to drive the hands. The reason that the four motors run at identical speed is that each revolves at the identical speed of a motor in a master clock at the central station, and the reason that this and all other Telechrons on the system make the same number of revolutions in a minute is that, being synchronous motors, their speed is a function of the frequency of the alternating current that supplies them. By the aid of the master clock, this current is held to a constant frequency of so many cycles per second and all the Telechrons respond by a definite number of turns per minute. It is very ingenious, very simple, and very reliable.

To meet the remote contingency of a stoppage in current supply, provision is made for resetting the hands of the Gloucester Building clocks when current is restored. This is accomplished by feeding the motors temporarily. at a considerably higher frequency from a special motor-generator set, thus speeding them up until the hands have caught up to their correct position in agreement with the master clock.

Gloucester Building is an ornament and business acquisition to Hongkong, and its towering clocks, with faces illuminated, give a very useful service by day and night.

Gloucester Restaurant was one of my early childhood memories. I was recently looking for some interior photos online, but I could not locate anything.

Last night, I was going through my childhood photos, and found this one photo of me holding a red balloon (see image below). I discovered the red balloon had "Gloucester Restaurant 告羅士打酒家" and the face of a clown clearly printed on it,

Balloons were given out to children, so that the parents could eat their lunch in peace.

Gloucester Arcade was a myriad of shops, including Watsons Chemist, a great toy shop and Gilman & Company Limited's showroom where my mother was manager (1957-71) and involved in selling airconditioners and refrigerators manufactured by Philco.  There was Godown storage underneath the arcade, also owned by Gilman & Co., and as a child I was allowed to go there and choose tins of chocolate covered peanuts, Cadbury Milk bars etc.  The cake shop in the arcade was from the marvellous Gloucester Restaurant upstairs.  Their chau siu bao (pork buns) and dan tarts (delicious warm custard tarts) were a real treat.  The dim sum restaurant upstairs was one of the best in town, whereas now the best, in my opinion is the City Hall Restaurant.  In the 60s a new building, Central Building was attached by a walkway to Gloucester Building which allowed access to more wonders such as Da Silva Jewellers and an escalator upstairs to Joyce dress shop.

After WWII, my mother worked at the Hong Kong Hotel which was in Gloucester Building. Later, she was transferred to Hong Kong Land where she worked until the early 80s. I remember Gloucester Building as I used to visit my visit her at work until the building was demolished in 1977. I would like to contact some of the staff and their children who used to live staff quarters in the Building. 

Also, Mr. and Mrs. Au Lam and their famous cake shop are entrenched in my mind. I would also like to contact their children/grandchildren and share my memories with them. 

Tell me, was your brother Michael? And lived on Old Peak Road?
I was friends with him until he went to boarding school. 

Yes Michael Gough is my brother.  He is 14 years younger than I am and lives in Lanzarote.  His name is now Mike Cliff-Jones.  He has written a couple of books about living in Lanzarote.  We lived in Luginsland.  He went to boarding school much too young in my opinion and our family left Hong Kong in 1971.  carol gough

Is this the "Gough" family who used to live on Green Island where the gunpowder and explosive storage were? If not, do you know that family and what became of them? My father used to be the lighthouse keeper on that island. 

Thanks for that Carol,
I'm Alun, and lived in Luginsland as well, but I'm not sure if we ever met.
I was in the same year at Glenealy with Michael.

The Gloucester Lounge was the meeting place for my mother and her friends to have coffee most days when in Central in the 1950s/60s and for me it was a sanctuary of wonderful scents and gluttony! My parents had friends - two Australian couples who lived there before the war where they would stay on Hong Kong side when they lived in Hankow Road Kowloon side. Watson's The Chemists in the Arcade was the essential centre of Central as well as the showrooms, the books and records shop aaand vaguely ....British Council Library up stairs on the way home from KGV. I left in 1963 my parents Fred and Kath Evans a few years later - my sister Judi and husband Roy Spencer and family decades on but I am still homesick thinking about Gloucester Arcade the China Fleet Club, golf at Deep Water Bay and Fanling, singing in the choir at St John's and looking over Pok Fu Lam Reservoir from Peak Mansions!