Duxton Hill

The history of Duxton Hill is as lively and colourful as the karaoke joints and cheeky bars that comprise its neatly conserved shophouses today. The Hill was originally a nutmeg plantation of a well-to-do Englishman, later owned by a party-throwing Portuguese dentist, and later still by a Arab spice trader, who in turn sold and leased parcels of the area to wealthy Chinese developers.

By the 1890s, the developers had built two- and three-storey shophouses in Duxton Hill and the more affluent Chinese moved into the area. Rickshaw pullers, whose ranks were growing fast since the rickshaw was introduced to Singapore in 1880, also found the hill a convenient place to park their rickshaws as it was close to the Jinrickshaw Station. The life of a puller was hard and the Hill transformed once again, this time known for its opium dens, brothels, and gambling houses.

By 1920, inflation, the unequal distribution of wealth, and the advent of a large-scale motorized transport system combined against the pullers’ livelihood with a vengeance. Rickshaws were banned in 1947, but Duxton Hill remained a seedy area associated with criminal elements.

The mid-1980s saw Duxton Hill included in the Tanjong Pagar Conservation Plan. With the assistance of the Urban Redevelopment Authority, many of the area’s shophouses were restored to their original appearance. Trendy restaurants, high brow galleries, and less seedy bars populated the newly conserved shophouses. While still associated by many with vice, Duxton Hill by the noughties became a prime destination for boutique hedge funds, advisory firms and brokerages attracted to Singapore. “Duxton Hill in Tanjong Pagar is buzzing with them”, former Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong proclaimed in a 2010 speech, “They have displaced the buzz of late night pleasure-seekers in dimly-lit pubs.”