East Hall & West Hall / Lyton House [c.1932-????]

Submitted by Admin on Tue, 06/22/2010 - 18:24
Current condition
Demolished / No longer exists
Date completed
(Day, Month, & Year are approximate.)

There's a mention in the The China Mail, 1949-01-25, page 4, where:

"S D Woo, assistant manager of the Lyton House, 32-38 Mody Road was fined $100..."

The problem was that the plans submitted to the government showed less rooms than the hotel actually contained.

Oldtimer wrote:

Regarding the hotel in the foreground of this photo, my friend said the following:

"Yes, it was Lyton House Hotel where I lived from 1956 to the late 1960s. I think it was #4 Mody Road. This was my father's hotel which catered to British Army officers exclusively."

Physically, it was located on Mody Road. I have visited him many times at this hotel. What a great photo to recall my childhood memory standing on that top floor balcony!!!

Previous place(s) at this location
First building on the corner of Mody Road and Blenheim Avenue [????-????]
Later place(s) at this location
Lyton Building [1962- ]

Photos that show this Place

1935
1930s
Signal Hill
c.1957
See more photos of this place

Comments

Lyton House on Mody Road in its early years.  Just beyond Lyton House there looks like a road but it could not have been Chatham Road given this city block is quite long, or was it?  (photo source: former House resident) 

Lyton House, Mody Road

 

Thanks for posting this. I've found another photo of this building and added it above (the 1930 photo). It shows another building beyond Lyton House, then Chatham Road beyond that.

If this is the building you remember from the 1950s, there have been three buildings on this site. I've made a new Place for the two-storey building with a pitched roof: http://gwulo.com/node/27254

Then there is this four-storey flat-roofed building, and finally there is the current building. Buildings don't last long here!

Regards, David

Yes David, it is the same building where I visited my classmate in the 1950s.  In the front lobby, there was a display of a boat inside a glass bottle  likelywas that held by a staff in the other photo.  I remember its rear appearance well but not so much about the front until my classmate sent me this photo.  Some time after 1959, his father sold it at bargain price which was changed to Empress Hotel (one already on Connaught West in HK).

Many thanks --- Places and buildings I saw decades ago got stored somewhere and then forgotten, then memory comes back when I see these photos.  Another example is the antique building on the NW corner of Nathan and Jordan Road - the place I have walked by and my brief glimpse from Number 4 bus while rounding that corner.    

Among the comments to this place a house behind Lyton House is mentioned. This is either a separate building or just one. The new houses also used the open space (garden?) between the former Philips House and Chatham Road. Both houses look quite similar.

Here's a view from the opposite side compared to the one from 1930 posted above: 

Mid-1930s TST Signal hill
1930s TST Signal hill, by eternal1966e

Compare also the the view from around 1927/28:

Chatham Road Houses 1927/28 annotated
Chatham Road Houses 1927/28 annotated, by Klaus

I think Lyton House was so named after the war. Looking at the 1938 Street Index for Mody Road, the buildings were called East Hall and West Hall with the latter being at the junction of Mody Road and Blenheim Avenue. Came across a "to let" advertisement from 1932 notifying that the newly-completed flats at West Hall were available for occupancy.