Argyle Street-CLP building

mike
Mon, 09/22/2014 - 23:43
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Argyle Street-CLP building

HKG 1960s Mike's photos

Date picture taken
1968
Gallery
1960s Mike Cussans' photos
Shows place(s)
Nairn House [1957- ]
China Light and Power - CLP [1940- ]

Comments

The high-rise buildings opposite CLP's Head Office are Nairn House which were/are government staff quarters. Very spacious and airy inside from recollections visiting friends who lived there. The road alongside off Argyle Street was Nairn Road now known as Princess Margaret Road. The ambience of these apartments was destroyed when the Argyle Street and Princess Margaret Road flyovers were built directly in front and to the side of them. Who was Nairn to have a road and buildings named after him?

I seem to recollect that Nairn was the Commander of British Forces. I think the army had built Nairn Rd later to be renamed Princess Margaret Rd.

Sad to say that the western portion fo the CLP HQ (to the right of the clock tower in the photo) is now being demolished to make way for (surprise!!) another residential high-rise.  The clock tower and that section of the HQ will be preserved and proposed to house a showroom telling CLP's history.

I lived in several flats in Nairn House in the 1960's. My father was in the HK Customs, and there were other Customs, Police and other HK Govt. servants there. I well remember being admonished for being one of the culprits responsible for digging a large system of tunnels in the garden at the front of the blocks in which we hid our vat collection of Dinky military vehicles...none left now! From the balconies there was a direct view to the 'checkerboard' used for aircraft approaches to Kai Tak runway 13 - sadly no longer possible!

Hi Mike

Sorry  to trouble with you, however.... can we have the chance to get a more HIGH resolution one for our memories...., during it just have few photo for the waterloo hill.

Thank for for your share

Hi Mike,

I saw your photo of Nairn House which was taken in 1968, right?

I wonder whether you were there in 1964?

It is a serious research I am doing.  I am a founder of www.look4mama.com .  I am helping my friends who are adoptees and were abandoned during 1950s - 1960s in Hong Kong, to look for their birth mother/family.

I am helping hundreds of them and trying to track down some roots for them.

One of the girls who was found on the hillside of Nairn Road at 6:45am on 13 Dec 1964.

I guess the hillside of Nairn Road would be Waterloo Road hill now.

I saw someone's comment saying he used to live in Nairn House. 

May I ask that person whether he remembers anything around that area in 1964, please?

Was there a squarter huts area on the hillside or other side of Nairn Road when he used to live there?

Anymore information about that area of Nairn Road would be great, please!

Thanks.

 

 

Nairn Road is the old name for today's Princess Margaret Road:

Nairn Road, which stretched northward (in the middle of King’s Park and Homantin resettlement areas) to the intersection of Waterloo Road and Argyle Street, was widened to become a major route, connecting Chatham Road to areas north of King’s Park and Homantin, and to Kowloon Tong. By the second half of the 1960s, Nairn Road was renamed Princess Margaret Road, and residents in the area settled in public housing elsewhere.

Page 181 of The Diaries of the Maryknoll Sisters in Hong Kong, 1921-1966

Renamed Princess Margaret Road after the royal visit in 1966. I was wrong to suggest the road was named after the CBF as the road system in the area was named after Scottish towns. 

Princess Margaret Road was constructed in stages and completed in the early 1970s as indicated here

1970s Princess Margaret Road Flyover - Nairn House
1970s Princess Margaret Road Flyover - Nairn House, by Moddsey