Tiong Bahru 中峇鲁 is one of the earliest public housing estate undertaken by by Singapore Improvement Trust (SIT) in the early thirties, where SIT was a government body set up by the British in 1927.
The Tiong Bahru area is located at the fringe of the city centre. “Tiong Bahru” is an amalgam of two words: tiong, a Chinese word for ‘cemetery’ and bahru, a Malay word meaning ‘new’. It is so called to differentiate the graveyard in the area from other older Chinese graveyards in and near Chinatown. Apart from being used as a burial ground, the area in the early days was used mainly for plantations, and by military personnel from the Sepoy Lines fortification at Pearl’s Hill.
After Singapore General Hospital was relocated to its present site in 1882, settlers began to move into the low-lying areas around it. By the 1920s, this young settlement had grown into a village called Kampong Tiong Bahru. However, disorderly growth of the village being marked by overcrowding squatters and poor sanitation, soon became a concern for both the hospital and health authorities. Hence, SIT was set up to address housing and sanituary situation in the area.
In 1936, SIT started to build infrasturctural work and housing estate. By 1954, SIT had added a further 1,258 flats to the northern side of Tiong Bahru. These flats were proven very popular and by end 1950s, about 17,000 people were living in these SIT built flats.
Fast forward today, Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) shortlisted 20 blocks of the pre-WWII flats (bounded by Seng Poh Road, Tiong Poh Road and Moh Guan Terrace) for conservation in 2013.
Today, Tiong Bahru had became a quaint neighbourhood where the contemporary new design HDB and the traditional pre-war walkup apartment co-exist in perfect harmony.
