Hollywood Road Police Quarters Site

The old police barracks and married quarters on Hong Kong’s Hollywood Road has been designated a heritage site. It will be interesting to see what happens to it though, unlike many other buildings around Hong Kong, it seems it will remain standing. The site will be leased to a non-profit body to establish a ‘creative cluster’ for at least ten years (after that?? who knows) and apparently HK$300mn has been earmarked in government funds for the redevelopment. 40 different organisations have so far expressed an interest in running the site – approximately 20% of the development will be commercial and rent paying to part fund the ‘creative cluster’. It’s good to see that the foundations of the Central School on the site, the first school in Hong Kong to offer a western-style education in 1889, will have to be preserved as part of the plan. The School was severely damaged during World War Two and demolished to make way for the police quarters. The quarters themselves are highly modernist and a great example of functionalist architecture in Hong Kong, designed as married quarters for Chinese rank and file officers and their families.

You can see some ‘artist’s impressions’ of the site revamped here.

Below is a picture of the Central School in its heyday.

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