History
During the early days, the majority of owners were young families with young children. Many houses were rented to expatriate families who worked in the camps in Sembawang belonging to the British Services (Air Force, Army and Navy).
The original price of an intermediate terrace house was S$20,000, quite a princely sum during the sixties. Many buyers just paid the deposit of around $2,000 and rented out their houses to service the loan for the balance of $18,000. The rent could easily service the loan.
There was a sarabat stall (drink stall) on the pedestrian walkway just in front of where the Shell Station is now located. This sarabat stall was there until the full completion of building all the houses.
Upper Thomson Road in those days was a single lane traffic, both ways. Kampong San Teng was famous for its gangster activities. Tay Koh Yat buses used to serve the area.
Imperial Theatre stood where Imperial Court. The theatre was open-air with hard wooden seats. In the mornings the area was turned into a market where vegetables, meats and fruits were sold.
There were a few cemeteries around the estate, including a Cantonese Kampong San Teng Cemetery (around the present Raffles Institution) and a Hainanese Cemetery (the present Lake View Estate).
Read more about this topic: Yew Lian Park
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“In history the great moment is, when the savage is just ceasing to be a savage, with all his hairy Pelasgic strength directed on his opening sense of beauty;—and you have Pericles and Phidias,—and not yet passed over into the Corinthian civility. Everything good in nature and in the world is in that moment of transition, when the swarthy juices still flow plentifully from nature, but their astrigency or acridity is got out by ethics and humanity.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The history of reform is always identical; it is the comparison of the idea with the fact. Our modes of living are not agreeable to our imagination. We suspect they are unworthy. We arraign our daily employments.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“We don’t know when our name came into being or how some distant ancestor acquired it. We don’t understand our name at all, we don’t know its history and yet we bear it with exalted fidelity, we merge with it, we like it, we are ridiculously proud of it as if we had thought it up ourselves in a moment of brilliant inspiration.”
—Milan Kundera (b. 1929)