Having to bid farewell to another old friend?

It was with sadness that I read the news about the impending closure of the Tanjong Pagar Railway Station in July next year, which was announced today. It has very much been a part of the Singapore that I grew up loving, one that I first became acquainted with on the makan trails that may parents led us on from the heights of Mount Faber. What the news release does not say is whether the station which has served for so long, providing many of us, including myself, with many memories of adventures on the railway to the Federation or Malaya as we may have referred to to it back then, will have to go, as both Malaysia, which owns the station and the railway land, and Singapore seek to jointly redevelop the parcels of land around the railway.

The entrance to Tanjong Pagar Railway Station with the four pillars of Malaya's economy, Agriculture, Commerce, Transport and Industry.

Transport, one of the four pillars.

The distinctive architectural style of the station hails from an era when European railway travel was at its height, as it is said to have been influenced by the architect behind Finland’s Helsinki Station. The station has stood as a landmark in the area since 1932, has survived much of the renewal that has swept through Tanjong Pagar, as up till now, the Malaysia government has resisted the many attempts by the Singapore government to persuade it to redevelop the railway land and the land on which the station stands. The station features four large statues on the four pillars at its entrance, each symbolising one of the then Malaya’s four economic pillars. The top of each of the pillars also bears one of the letters in the initials, FMSR, which stand for the Federated Malay States Railway, as it was known then.  The station has a very airy lobby which features batik styled mosaic mural panels which depict scenes around Malaya, which are reminiscent of the style of batik paintings that were once popular in Singapore and Malaysia.

The airy lobby features batik styled mosaic murals depicting scenes of Malayan life.

Moasic mural panels in the lobby.

Close up with a scene showing coconut plucking.

Close up of the mosaic panel depicting farmers planting padi in a padi field.

I have in my life passed through the lobby and the gates to the platform many times, and have many fond memories of the station as well as of the many railway journeys I had made to and from the station. I have also many fond memories of listening for the sound of the whistle and watching the comings and goings of trains from the vantage point of my aunt’s flat in Spottiswoode Park, each Lunar New Year’s eve where my extended family would gather for our reunion dinner. With the news, it would not be very long when the platforms that would come to life with the arrival and departure of the trains several times a day, would be left silent, as would the magnificent building that fronts the platforms. It may yet be a vain hope, but I do hope that the building is preserved in some form, not just for memories sake, but because it has for so long been so much a part of  the Tanjong Pagar area, and with the loss over the years of the many buildings we had come to associate with the area, it is one of the last remaining bits of heritage we have left in Tanjong Pagar.

The train platforms will soon fall silent.

A station clock on the exterior of the building.

A reminder of the romantic days of rail travel that the station served.

The timetable.

Hopefully the view of Singapore from what is technically a part of Malaysia will survive the relocation of the train station to Woodlands.

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The Star’s news release earlier today on the imminent shift of the station to Woodlands.

KTM Tg Pagar station will move to Woodlands in S’pore July 1, 2011

SINGAPORE: KTM Tanjung Pagar station will move to Woodlands in Singapore on July 1 next year, say Malaysian and Singaporean leaders.

The KTM land issue has bogged down ties in the past with both sides playing hardball diplomacy and having their own interpretations of the Points of Agreement (POA) signed in 1990, on the terms of development and status of the KTM land that expands from Woodlands in the north to Tanjung Pagar in the south of Singapore.

Under the POA, Malaysia and Singapore, among other things, agreed that the KTM railway station be moved from Tanjung Pagar to a location to be decided later.

However, over the years, negotiations stalled after both sides failed to agree on where the new location should be in Singapore.

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A pauper’s house under the jackfruit tree?

In Singapore, we have grown accustomed to the many names by which places could be referred to by the different ethnic groups. While this usually revolves around either a translation of what the name means in a different language or the pronunciation especially in the case where a proper name is involved. Once in a while, we do come across a set of names that when translated; takes meanings which seem completely different from one another, which is the case with an area that was once known as Rumah Miskin.

The area that was once called Rumah Miskin and also Mangka-kah, seen today.

I had become acquainted with the area early in my life, passing through on the back of a bechak (trishaw). This was on the many trips accompanying my maternal grandmother to an area a little further away that she referred to as Kampong Jawa. My impression of the area had always been that of the longish building with a staircase that had a wooden banister visible from Balestier Road. The building had been part of the Rumah Miskin Police Station, which had stood as a landmark at the corner of Serangoon Road and Balestier Road for many years. The name, Rumah Miskin translated as “Pauper’s House”, had always been a source of fascination for me. My grandmother, who had in all probability not put much thought into the origins of the name, was not able to offer much to satisfy my curiosity as to the origins of the area’s name. Unable to find an explanation, I allowed my imagination provide the explanation, and for a while, I had the impression that the building with the staircase must have once been that home for the poor.

Another view of the Rumah Miskin area today.

It was later in life that I learnt of another intriguing name by which the area had been referred to. Rumah Miskin was used by the Malay and English speaking communities, and the Chinese speaking community had referred to the area as Mangka-kah, which in Hokkien or Teochew, could be taken to mean “jackfruit leg” (possibly at the foot of or in the shadow of the jackfruit tree) or perhaps “mosquito bitten leg”. The former does seem quite plausible as an explanation of the origins of the name, and as some would have it, that came from jackfruit groves that were thought to have existed in the area. I was also told later that there was another interpretation of “jackfruit leg” that could provide another possible explanation for the name, which unrelated as it may sound, does seem to have something to do with the Malay name for the area.

The Rumah Miskin area is also where another landmark, the Kwang Wai Shiu Hospital, which had recently been in the news for the hefty increase in rent following a renewal on its 99 year lease, which expired this February, stands. The hospital was known as the Kwang Wai Shiu Free Hospital then, and did, as the name suggests, provide free treatment for the less fortunate. My grandmother had herself visited the outpatient clinic there on many occasions in the 1970s, when she found that it was more affordable (despite having to pay for the treatment) than the Rakyat Clinic that she used along Balestier Road. The hospital had started in 1910 with buildings that had been inherited from the original pauper’s hospital, Tan Tock Seng, when that moved to Moulmein Road in 1909. That set of buildings were demolished sometime in the early 1950s to make way for the hospital buildings that we see today. It was actually from the pauper’s hospital that the area took its name, the hospital being a home for infirmed and poor, hence the name Rumah Miskin. As to what this has got to do with the name Mangka-kah, the explanation was that the name originated with the sight of patients of the hospital hobbling around on their diseased legs which could be observed in the area – the wounds and sores on their legs of these patients were said to resemble a jackfruit, hence “jackfruit leg”. Whichever explanation for the origins of the name Mangka-kah, it would probably be difficult to establish today.

The Kwan Wai Shiu Hospital building was rebuilt in the early 1950s.

Information board on Kwan Wai Shiu Hospital.

Today, all we see is an empty plot of land at the junction where the Rumah Miskin Police Station had stood as a landmark. The buildings had been used as a halfway house for drug addicts by the Singapore Anti-Narcotics Association (SANA) when the Police Station closed its doors around 1975, and for a while later, became the premises of the Indian Fine Arts Society, before being demolished. With the demise of the buildings, the names Rumah Miskin and Mangka-kah seem to have perished as well – I have not heard of it being used for quite a long while now. With this, there is somehow a sense of loss and sadness, not just at the passing of another landmark, but also with a name that would soon be lost with time.

The buildings of the Rumah Miskin Police Station are conspicuously absent from the plot of land where they once served as a landmark.

Another view of the junction where the Rumah Miskin Police Station once stood.

Some old buildings still stand in the area ...

As wrecking equipment stand threateningly in the vicinity.