Saturday, September 1, 2012

Very rare photo of P.E. Estate

To my good fortune, I found a very rare photo of Princess Elizabeth Estate taken in 1951.




This was taken during the actual construction of the estate at Hillview.
The building in the foreground is blk 21 (from the back).
 I would live in this block during my childhood!
The primary school would be located immediately to the right of this building separated by Elizabeth Drive. The school would only be built later in 1955.

You can see 2 rows of artisan quarters beside the curved Elizabeth Drive in the middle.

In the background you can see Malayan Guttas factory (centre) and to the far right, the Hume Industries factory. Bukit Timah Hill is to the back of Hume where you can see the hillside scars made by the Singapore Granite Quarry.

The little hillock behind Malayan Guttas (to the left side) would be where Fuyong Estate would be built later.



The above photo shows a corner of the estate football field where blk 11 (left) meets blk 12 (right).
In the background are the 3-storeys blk 21 (left) and blk 17 (right).


This is from a blueprint of the estate construction plans. It shows the floorplan for the 3-storey blocks which had the 4 room units at the ends, i.e. of blks 17, 18, 21 & 22.
In the plan above, the following numbers refer to 1. Bedrooms, 2. Living room, 3. Kitchen,
4. Verandah (balcony), 5. toilet & 6. bathroom.


2 comments:

  1. Good heavens, where did you manage to find these pictures. I think the housing plan is only for some blocks. The corner unit for my block is different. The kitchen did not extend outwards.

    YUM Shoen Liang

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  2. Hi Tarraleah,
    The housing plan above were for those blocks that had a four-room unit at the ends (blks 17,18,21& 22)
    I lived in one of those 4 room units (blk 21). This additional room made the kitchen extended further to the back.
    In the top photo, it would be the unit at the extreme right on the ground floor.

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