WHEN it comes to naming Singapore most famous neighbourhoods, you won’t find a place called Tiong Bahru on the list.
Chinatown, Little India, Kampong Glam, they’re the suburbs that get all the fame.
But Tiong Bahru is a delightful destination that lets visitors step back in time to the days before sky-scraping towers were standard issue in the Lion City, and the residents lived in low-rise buildings designed with a nod to the stylish architectural influences of the day.
Tiong Bahru was established in the 1930s, which makes it one of the oldest housing estates in Singapore, and as the rest of the island nation was modernised over the decades to accommodate the growing population this compact neighbourhood was been kept just the way it was when first built.
Today there are 30 three and four-storey apartment blocks around the streets that are named after pioneering Chinese settlers, housing a total of 900 units, with each handsome structure combining art-deco flourishes that were popular at the time with the iconic shophouse architecture that’s so common right through the older parts of Singapore.
In the days before the Japanese invaded in the 1942 it was only the very rich that could afford to live in Tiong Bahru, so it quickly earned a reputation for being an exclusive place to reside with those early residents taking pride in their dwellings and looking after them which is part of the reason the settlement has endured.
It was also the place that the island’s most rich and powerful men kept their mistresses – it became known as Mei Ren Wo, or Den of Beauties – and some of these elegant dames, who are now in their 70s and 80s, still occupy units around the neighbourhood making them icons of the area.
Today Tiong Bahru is attracting trendy young people and expats who not only want to live in a neighbourhood with a sense of community but in dwellings that have some style and history, and it is also the place to go for good coffee with urbane cafes springing up around the streets.
