Saturday, January 01, 2011

Then and Now – Collyer Quay

Happy New Year all readers.

In today’s Straits Times, there is an article about the annual sea sports events that used to be held in the waters off the Collyer Quay on New Year's Day fifty years ago. If you want to see video footages of these activities, you can watch the documentary, Lost Images which was shown on Okto Channel twice. They are part of the vast collection of the films and photographs left behind by the late Dr Ivan Polunin who passed away recently

Yes; indeed Singapore’s waterfront has changed dramatically over the past few decades. Take a look at the two sets of Then and Now photographs below for example. The “Then” photos were taken by Antoine Lahitte in 1951. The “Now” photos were taken by me two weeks ago probably from the very same spot.



* My apologies for mispelling the name, Antoine Lahitte in the photos.

1 comment:

peter said...

Those were the days (after we merged with Federation of Malaya to form Malaysia) when they staged the PESTA SUKAN series like this sea carnival in front of the GPO (now Fullerton Hotel). I believe the tradition goes back even earlier to the 1950s when the British ruled Singapore. At that time Othman Wok the Social Affairs Minister was the GOH.