St Paul's College Hostel / Church Guest House / Martin House [1919- ]

Submitted by David on Mon, 11/23/2009 - 23:42
Current condition
In use
Date completed

1, Upper Albert Road.

Thanks to 80skid for pointing out this building. He notes that half of the original building still stands today, and that it gets a couple of mentions in this document:

  • "the Former Church Guest House, also known as Martin House, built in 1919"
  • "The Former Church Guest House, a three-storey building, was later converted into a hostel with many well-known missionaries and the famous writer Han Suyin residing there."
Previous place(s) at this location
College Gardens [????- ]

Photos that show this Place

c.1930 View of Central & Harbour
1930s
1946
1940s
See more photos of this place

Comments

Notes from Adam:

Before it was called Church Guest House, [it] was opened on December 9, 1919 as St Paul's College Hostel. It was officially opened by Sir Reginald Stubbs with a silver key given him by the architect. It was a hostel for students and the whole top floor was the college principal's residence. It was built on the site of College Gardens. It later became Church Guest House, and was used to house missionaries, which was when the author Han Suyin lived there. What remains today is called Martin House, but the section of the building to the left of the main entrance (as we see it) was demolished to make way for a newer block in the late 1950s.

Funnily enough this building caught my attention last year on a trip to the Botanical Gardens. Took a snap and filed it away waiting to look into a bit more. Seems I don't have to, but here, you can have the snap.

Church Guest House 2009

From Phil's snap, you can see that the original wall still exists where that half of the building was demolished in the 1950s. It goes all the way along. I suppose I should really declare a special interest in this building in that I lived there for ten years in a small apartment.