Relatively undisturbed for the past 50 years, Toa Payoh Rise may see a big change in the coming years, due to its location being one of the areas that will be affected by the construction of the North-South Corridor, Singapore’s 11th expressway.
Located off Thomson Road, Toa Payoh Rise was initially called Toa Payoh Road, but due to the similarity in the name with Jalan Toa Payoh in the same locality, the then-City Council decided to rename it Toa Payoh Rise in 1961. In the early seventies, the secluded road got many taxi drivers confused about its location, as many of them thought it was situated within Toa Payoh estate.
In 1973, the Singapore Association for the Blind even wrote to the authority, suggesting to change Toa Payoh Rise to Jalan Buta (buta refers to blind in Malay), Blind Rise or White Cane Road. The name “white cane” would raise awareness to the motorists, so that they could take extra care of the numerous blind pedestrians in the vicinity. The Committee on Street Names, however, ruled that the name Toa Payoh Rise would not be altered.
Singapore Association for the Visually Handicapped
Founded in 1951, the Singapore Association for the Blind was one of the establishments at Toa Payoh Rise in the early seventies, where it set up its industrial centre and workshop for the visually impaired to learn various skills in carpentry, baskets making and other handicrafts. The association was renamed Singapore Association for the Visually Handicapped in 1987.
The junction between Toa Payoh Rise and Thomson Road was once an accident-prone area due to speeding vehicles and a lack of road safety features for both the pedestrians from the Blind School and patients from Thomson Road Hospital. Safety First Campaigns had to be introduced in the seventies to create awareness for the motorists approaching Thomson Road and Toa Payoh Rise.
Thomson Road Hospital/Toa Payoh Hospital
The most prominent landmark at Toa Payoh Rise was the former Thomson Road Hospital, officially opened on 19 May 1959 by former Minister for Health Armand Joseph Braga (1900-1968).
Built for the chronic sick, the hospital was established to meet the increasing public demands for medical services in Singapore, which, by the late fifties, were struggling as the then-Sepoy Lines General Hospital (present-day Singapore General Hospital) could not accommodate the large number of patients.
Thomson Road Hospital’s foundation was laid on a small hill at Toa Payoh Rise in 1957, and its construction took about two years, at a cost of $4.5 million. At the start of its operation in 1959, it had a medical team made up of only two doctors and seven nurses.
The sixties saw Thomson Road Hospital rapidly picking up in both its capabilities and reputation. Postgraduate clinical training was given to local as well as overseas physicians. This was followed by formal nursing training when the hospital established the School of Nursing for Pupil Assistant Nurse in 1965.
In the same year, Thomson Road Hospital also added a new extension block with 500 beds and other facilities. It aided the hospital, in the next several years, to become capable in providing general and specialised medical services such as neurosurgery, obstetrics, gynaecology, neonatology and orthopaedic surgery. In 1968, it was renamed Thomson Road General Hospital, Singapore’s second general hospital after Singapore General Hospital.
The hospital continue to grow in the seventies. In 1975, it changed its name again – this time to Toa Payoh Hospital, named after the new satellite town in its close proximity. Toa Payoh Hospital, by the eighties and nineties, was operating in almost full capacity due to the development and maturing of nearby new towns in Ang Mo Kio, Bishan and Yishun. A new site had to be sourced as it was obvious that Toa Payoh Hospital could no longer cope with the demands.
On 15 February 1997, the 38-year-old Toa Payoh Hospital officially ceased its operations. A year later, it was merged with Changi Hospital to become Changi General Hospital located at Simei. The old premises of Toa Payoh Hospital was initially intended to be taken over by Ren Ci Community Hospital, but the plan did not materialise. They were eventually demolished in the late nineties.
In the seventies, there were appeals by the public to construct another road to Toa Payoh Hospital, which was accessible only via the narrow Toa Payoh Rise. The traffic condition was sometimes made worse by the congestion at its junction with Thomson Road. To ease Thomson Road’s traffic issues, the Public Works Department (PWD) in 1979 constructed a new three-carriageway Marymount Road that included a flyover across Braddell Road. An overhead pedestrian bridge was also built across Thomson Road, at the bus stop near its junction with Toa Payoh Rise.
Marymount Convent
Another landmark at Toa Payoh Rise was Marymount Convent, which had its roots linked to the Congregation of the Sisters of the Good Shepherd originated in France.
One of the Good Shepherd Sisters named Mother Ligouri Burke came to Singapore in 1939, and was given a plot of land along Thomson Road in 1947 by the British government to start the Convent of the Good Shepherd. The convent, upon completion, was officially opened on 29 May 1950 by the Governor of Singapore Sir Franklin Gimson.
In late 1950, the Catholic premises was in the spotlight when Dutch girl Maria Hertogh (also called Nadra) was temporarily placed in the convent’s Girls’ Home during the high profile custody battle. The arrangement sparked off a riot and resulted in hundreds of protesters trying to force their way into the convent. The police had to step in to prevent the forced intrusion. The authority later relocated Maria Hertogh and her biological mother to St. John’s Island, before sending them to Kallang Airport where they boarded the plane to Holland.
In 1958, a convent school, with a kindergarten, was established at Marymount Convent, with Maurice O’Neil appointed as its first principal. Many of the girl students received their educations at Marymount Convent School since young, starting from the convent’s kindergarten until the completion of their primary and secondary school classes.
In 1971, the school added a Home Economics unit in 1971 for cookery and sewing classes. By the mid-nineties, Marymount Convent School became a sole primary school after its secondary school classes were phased out. Going through a rebuilding period in the late nineties, the school was reopened in its new premises at 20 Marymount Road in 1999. Today, the school has more than 1,400 students in 40 classes.
Lions Home for the Elders
Situated next to Marymount Convent was formerly a vacant single-storey building about 830 square metres in size. A solid bunker that had saved many lives during the Second World War air raids, the building was forgotten over the years, and was “illegally” used by Chinese worshippers to release snakes after their prayers for their loved ones at Toa Payoh Hospital.
In 1983, the former bomb shelter was finally put into good use when the Ministry of Social Affairs collaborated with the Lions Clubs of Singapore to convert the building into a nursing home for the elderly and aged sick.
The Lions Clubs, which was in charge of a convalescent home at Ang Mo Kio, raised about $300,000, half of the total cost, to renovate the bunker, giving it fresh coats of paint and installing new windows, kitchen and dining hall. Medical equipment and beds were also procured for the home’s capacity of 60 patients.
The Lions Home for the Elders was officially opened in November 1985 by Suppiah Dhanabalan, former Minister for Foreign Affairs and Community Development.
Toa Payoh Rise Apartments
Tucked by the side of a quiet minor lane off Toa Payoh Rise is a row of four blocks of apartments that used to serve as housing quarters for the Toa Payoh Hospital’s medical staff. When Toa Payoh Hospital was closed and demolished in the late nineties, the three-storey apartments were left vacated for a period of time before being leased out as private apartments.
In 2011, the Circle Line’s Caldecott MRT Station was completed and opened beside the apartments, but the vicinity remained secluded. The apartments are some of the buildings at Toa Payoh Rise that are affected by the development of the North-South Corridor. The tenants of the apartments have since moved out, as the empty buildings are awaiting for their demolition, expected to begin in mid-2018.
Other Toa Payoh Rise landmarks included the former Toa Payoh Girls’ Home, previously located beside the Singapore Association for the Blind (Visually Handicapped), First Toa Payoh Primary and Secondary Schools and the Housing and Development Board (HDB) blocks of 164, 165, 166 and 167 (the HDB flats and schools had been demolished).
Established in 1967 to replace the Girls’ Homecraft Centre at Yorkhill, the social welfare home, consisted of several blocks of flatted dormitories, served as a rehabilitation centre for juvenile girls with family, relationship and other social issues and difficulties.
Toa Payoh Girls’ Home was closed in the 2000s, with its operations shifted to Singapore Girls’ Home at Defu Avenue. Its old vacant buildings at Toa Payoh Rise were subsequently demolished by local construction company Leong Hin Seng.
Published: 15 June 2018
The Singapore Zoo was officially opened on 27 June 1973 under the name of Singapore Zoological Gardens. Occupying an area of 28 hectares near the edges of Upper Seletar Reservoir, it was also fondly known as the Mandai Zoo.
Expressways would significantly improve the traffic conditions and travel time; an estimate of 1,800 to 2,000 vehicles could move along an expressway lane per hour.
The construction of ECP began in the early seventies on the reclaimed lands of the southeastern coast of Singapore. Taking almost a decade to complete, the coastal expressway was opened in 1981, the same year as the Changi Airport.
Completed in the mid-eighties, BKE runs from north to south, providing the link between Woodlands and PIE. At its northern end, it joins directly to the Woodlands Custom and Causeway. Along its 11km-long route, the expressway is connected to three other expressways in SLE, KJE and PIE.
Girls, on the other hand, loved to play “long long“, a variation of hide-and-seek, where the hider attracted the seeker’s attention by shaking a cigarette tin filled with pebbles.
Behind a drawn line roughly ten steps away from the stack of tin cans, a thrower would try to knock them down with a ball. Each thrower was allowed with two tries. Once the stack of tin cans was hit, both teams would scramble for the ball.
Trivial: The “Court Martial” was an elaborated version of hantam bola. Armed with stones, each player would have to dig a small hole in the field, and then took turns to roll the tennis ball into the hole. If the ball fell into the hole, the thrower had to retrieve it and try to hit the others who would be running away.
A more challenging version, called Snail Hopscotch, was also played by the local kids in the seventies. In this version, pebbles or stones were not used. The player would have to hop on one foot through the “snail” until he came to the centre semicircle marked “rest”, where he could place his two feet on the ground.
The game carried on until his last seed was dropped into an empty “hut”. If so, he could take all the seeds from the opposite side of that empty “hut” and transferred them to his “storehouse”. It would then be the opponent’s turn to play.
The player would be allowed to have his kicking foot touched the ground only once every kick. The one who had the most kicks would be the winner.
Popular among the girls, two or more could play the five stones game. The game began with all the five stones on the ground. The first player would have to throw the first stone up in the air, pick up the second stone, and catch both with the same hand. Then she would throw the third stone up in the air and catch all three stones. This continued until she had all five stones in one hand.
Zero point was another girls’ favourite game. The game typically involved skipping over the elastic rope that was made up of many rubber bands linked together.
The other games played by the kids of the sixties, seventies and eighties included Broken Telephone, Rounders, Statues and Tick Tock (Tic Tac Toe).
In 1984, the Singapore Broadcasting Corporation’s (SBC) Children and Educational Unit also launched a TV programme called O-Bay-Som (name inspired by the local children’s team selection orh-yah-beh-yah-som in a game) to introduce the traditional games to the new “Computer Age” generation.
The six-storey Copthorne Orchid Hotel was first started in 1969 as Orchid Inn by local magnate and chairman of Hong Leong Group Kwek Hong Png.
Located at Cuscaden Road, the hotel was known as Cuscaden House Hotel before it was bought over in 1973 by Khoo Teck Puat (1917-2004), a well-known local banker and hotelier, and, at one point, Singapore’s richest man.
Completed in 1972, the Cockpit Hotel was built at the former site of another luxury hotel called Hotel de L’Europe (not the same Hotel de L’Europe of the 19th and early 20th century).
Despite its name, the New 7th Storey Hotel was actually nine storey tall. When it was completed in 1953, it was briefly the tallest building at the Rochor vicinity, and many taxi drivers and motorists used it as a landmark for their directions.
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