Tiong Bahru Estate

Tiong Bahru
Name transcription(s)
• Chinese	中峇鲁
• Pinyin	Zhōngbālǔ
• Hokkien POJ	Tiongbāló͘
• Malay	Tiong Bahru
• Tamil	தியோங் பாரு
• Tamil Romanisation	tiöng bāru
SIT flats in Tiong Bahru
Country	Singapore

Tiong Bahru is a housing estate located within Bukit Merah Planning Area, in the Central Region of Singapore. Built in the 1920s, Tiong Bahru is the oldest housing estate of the city-state. It was the first project undertaken by the Singapore Improvement Trust (SIT), a government body administered by the British colonial authority, to provide for mass public housing in Singapore. The main estate consists of about 30 apartment blocks with a total of over 900 units and also high-rise HDB flats and condominiums along Boon Tiong Road, Jalan Membina and Kim Tian Road surrounding the main estate. The apartment blocks in the main estate are made up of two to five-storey flats and the units are assorted three to five-room apartments.

Tiong Bahru means "New Cemetery" (thióng 塚 – Hokkien for cemetery, bahru – Malay for new). Till the 1920s, it was an area dotted with many cemeteries. They were new as opposed to the established cemeteries in Chinatown. The present day Tiong Bahru Rd. was at onetime called " Burial Ground Rd". In 1925 this area was declared unsanitary and designated for improvement. The SIT (S'pore Improvement Trust) cleared out the squatters and moved the graves and then filled in and levelled the area.

The construction style of the estate is a mix of Streamline Moderne and local Straits Settlements shop-house architecture. The flats feature rounded balconies, flat rooftops, spiral staircases, light wells and underground storage and shelters. One notable feature of Tiong Bahru estate is that all its streets are named after Chinese pioneers of the 19th and early 20th centuries. For example, Chay Yan Street is named after rubber plantation merchant and philanthropist Tan Chay Yan; Peng Nguan Street is taken from Lim Peng Nguan, an early settler and father of famous merchant and community leader Lim Nee Soon.

It is apparent that a lot of effort was put into designing the estate with a series of flats that are visually pleasing. Thus the flats in the Tiong Bahru estate contrasted markedly with those of the much later post-war mass housing programs undertaken by SIT's successor, the Housing and Development Board. In contrast with the aesthetic art deco theme of the Tiong Bahru flats, the flats built by the Housing Board in the 1950s and 1960s are starkly utilitarian in appearance and design; where flats are almost identical in their two-dimensional "matchbox" style.