1850/60's Praya Reclamation - Buildings along the new shoreline

Submitted by Klaus on Mon, 04/16/2018 - 21:18

Temporary Remark: Problems that occurred during the update of this post, will be fixed soon

The extent of the 1850/60's Praya Reclamation is shown in https://gwulo.com/node/40695.

There it says:

During the early years of the Colonization of Hong Kong Island, the north shore was very narrow. The north coast included today’s Queen’s Road Central, which ran along the coast with piers and single-storey godowns lined along the waterfront. Since there was insufficient land along the coast for further development to meet the increasing population on Hong Kong Island, reclamation was carried out from the west of Kennedy Town to the east of Wanchai.

The planning for reclamation along the north coast by Governor George Bonham started in the early 1850s. In 1859, reclamation along the coast of Sheung Wan was completed and Queen’s Road (Queen’s Road Central today) and Bonham Strand were formed.

It’s interesting to see what this new coastline looks like and which houses were built there. On Gwulo, a number of images have been uploaded that show the new praya.

The general outline of this 1850/60's Praya Reclamation is shown in the map below:

The outline can be seen in this 1874 photo by Lai Afong.

Western 0333 View from the Peak 1874 Lettered.jpg, by Herostratus

This photo gives a good overview, but the details are hard to see. So let’s have a closer look at the other photos.

We start from west to east. Here is a detail of the 1866 map on Gwulo that illustrates the coastline in the following two photos. The map starts on the left with Hill or Whitty Street, and ends on the right with Central Street (although just outside the map).