Stored 1920's Queen Road Central facade - which building ?

Submitted by annelisec on Wed, 03/02/2016 - 01:22

Can anyone help identify a dressed granite building facade from an old 1920s building in Queens Road Central which was demolished in the 1970s-80s and was subsequently stored in Pokfulam until recently.  Current location unknown.We do not know which building it was or have a photo.

Advice on where to post this question on Chinese language websites is very welcome.

Submitted by on
Sat, 03/05/2016 - 09:35

One of the sub-forums on uwants.com is a good place to ask questions in identifying places and buildings. There are a couple of ongoing threads for that purpose. Although the question about the mysterious pagoda that generated a long thread on gwulo.com a year ago went unanswered.

Wild guess...Lane Crawford Building?

Such storage is not as unusual as you might think. When I was the policeman in charge of Stanley in the mid-1980's, I was told that the old Murray Building was to be dismantled and moved from it's location in Central. The bricks and columns were to be stored, in the open, on hillsides in Stanley (Ma Hang) and to a lesser extent in Tai Tam.

The Government intention was to "re-build" the structure later on the re-vamped Stanley waterfront.

I was sceptical at the time that this would happen; thankfully I was proved wrong!

Could they be from the Beaconsfield Arcade? Although I note from the information here on Gwulo that the Arcade was demolished in 1933, whereas we are looking for a building that was apparently demolished much later, perhaps in the 1970s.

Probably not - as you say, it doesn't sound likely the stones from the 1930s demolition would still be around in the 1970s. It's a pity I didn't think to measure the diameter of the columns when I went to see them.