Kowloon Hotel (3rd generation) [1923-1955]

It looks as though the building in these photos opened mid-1923. There are a couple of relevant mentions in the newspapers. In May it is 'nearing completion':

KOWLOON HOTEL

With regard to the big building at Hankow Road, Kowloon, now nearing completion as a hotel, [...]

The Hong Kong Telegraph, 1923-05-3, page 1

And by September it is already opened:

Lai Tin-wah, described as the proprietor of the Kowloon Hotel, was summoned at the instance of the Public Works Department, before Mr C D Melbourne this morning, for failing to obtain the necessary certificate from the Building Authority before occupying, or allowing to be occupied, the building as an hotel.

The Hong Kong Telegraph, 1923-09-26, page 1

The Kowloon Hotel was one of the hotels where the Japanese interned allied civilians before moving them to Stanley Camp. In Gwen Dew's Prisoner of the Japs, she writes:

We had been told by a gendarme office that we were being taken to the Peninsula Hotel, and that we were not prisoners of war, but "refugees". We were halted near that hotel, headquarters of the Japanese Military Command, while long conferences went on somewhere. We were parked near the arcade I described in the early part of this book, a fine new development with modern shops, which had been called the Chungking Arcade. That sign had already been ripped down and the Jap flag put up.

Finally we were taken to the Kowloon Hotel, a very second-rate hostelry behind the Peninsula, and marched up the steps, prodded by bayonets. We gathered in the lounge, and an officer told us: "You are now prisoners of Japan. Any infringement of our orders will be punishable by death by military law."

"Refugees" indeed!

Tony Banham's website has a list of all the people interned here. Search for IAKH on this page. (IAKH = "Internees at Kowloon Hotel At 18.1.1942")

An earlier generation of Kowloon Hotel was up on Haiphong Road, see http://gwulo.com/node/10437.

I'm not sure if there was a direct connection between them, eg the same owners, or if they just shared the same name.

The current Kowloon Hotel, see http://gwulo.com/node/7234, is the fourth hotel to use this name.

Just to confirm that the Kowloon Hotel (3d generation) opened for business on 1st September 1923

Source: The Hong Kong Telegraph, page 12, 28th August 1923

The Kowloon Hotel The Hong Kong Telegraph page 12 28th August 1923.png, by eurasian_david

The Manageress mentioned in the advert about the Hotel's opening might have been Mary, wife of John Johnstone Blake.