Kowloon Tong [????- ]

The Kowloon Tong Garden City Estate was initiated by Montague Ede in 1921 and was built between 1922-1932 as a type of "garden city" development of middle class housing in Hong Kong.  The site covered one hundred acres and included 250 detatched "garden houses" as well as other amenities such as parks and playgrounds.  There were 4 main housing types with standardized layouts - common type was a two-storey house with a verandah in the front of the building constructed of reinforced concrete, red brick and iron joists for beams, and the interior layout included a living room, dining room, kitchen and servants quarters on the ground floor, and one large bedroom and two small bedrooms on the upper floor.  Every house had electrical lights, and flush toilets.  All the street names in the area referred to English countires such as Surrey, Essex, Norfold, Rutland and Cornwall.  I beleive the architects for the KTGC Estate were Adams, Little and Woods and E. D. Shanks.  For references see PhD by Prudence Lau, CUHK 2013 "Adaptive Modern and Speculative Urbanism: The Architecture of the Credit Foncier d'Extreme-Orient in HK and China's Treaty Ports, 1907-1959" and the listing  on Kowloon Tong Garden City Estates by Cecelia Chu in "DOCOMOMO Mapping Modern Architecture in Hong Kong".

Hi David/Phil,

Would it be useful for me to post here a list of all the Kowloon Tong properties and their occupants mentioned in the Jurors Lists from 1925 onwards? (I've only gone through the 1925-1935 lists so far, but could maybe do up to 1941 if I get around to it) it is a fairly basic list at the moment, just the address, year of first mention in the jurors list, and the relevant person's name for each property, but I could hopefully add more to it later.

If you see any benefit to me doing this, how do I add a word document that is a few pages long? 

Cheers

Liz

Hi Liz,

As it will be a large document, I recommend you make its own page (http://gwulo.com/node/add/forum/2) then I'll link it in under this one.

You should be able to cut & paste from word into your page on Gwulo. The 6th button from left in the top row of the editor (a liitle clipboard icon with a 'w') can help when pasting from Word. 

Let me know if you run into any trouble.

Regards, David

I have noticed that a research project, titled "Speculative Urbanism: Modernist Planning and Housing Practices in Colonial HK, 1912-1939", is being undertaken from early 2015 until mid 2017, led by Dr Cecilia L. Chu at the Division of Landscape Architecture, HKU.  According to the website (see link below), the project may be considering the Kowloon Tong Estate development, and there are a couple of photos and maps to be seen on the website. 

Link: http://www.arch.hku.hk/research_project/speculative-urbanism-modernist-p...

Although admittedly there is not much more information at the moment, it will be interesting to read any research output from the project.

looking at the research link above - fascinated to see the two house type plans as in my Grandma's photographs - the curved balcony facade and the 'filled in' balcony facade ...  

...as they also appear on the Docomama link (http://www.docomomo.hk/site/kowloon-tong-garden-city/), courtesy of "Nathan Cho and Bosco So" from HKU. But I agree, it's very interesting to see these two models. Only a very few houses in Kowloon Tong actually retain those original features now, from what I can tell. I have seen perhaps two or three such houses, but it's difficult to know what is behind some of the high walls and trees of other places, so there could be more.

I think the sole survivors in Kowloon Tong (in terms of original facades) could be 29 Kent Road and 16 Cumberland Road, but there may be more. 

sad that so much of it has already been demolished though obviously the original houses would have to be adapted - also sad that the concept didn't really work out  - perhaps it might have given time and no war ... perhaps all this will be addressed by the research.