Dhoby Ghaut

Origins of street name


Dhoby Ghaut is derived from the Indian Words dhoby, meaning “laundry” and ghaut, meaning “the steps along the bank of a river”. The name stems from the laundry activities that used to take place here from the 1830s onwards. Indian dhobies used to wash their clothes using the water from Stamford Canal. The clothes were dried on empty land subsequently occupied by the Ladies Lawn Tennis Club, now occupied by the triangular-shaped park opposite Cathay cinema. In the past, the whole area was associated with laundry activities and Queen Street in Tamil was vannan teruvu or “Street of the dhobies” and the Malays called it “Kampong dhobi”.[1]
Launderers working in Stamford Canal, Singapore in the 1920s 
Former Cathay Building

The Former Cathay Building was designed by Frank W. Brewer in the Art Deco style, an architectural style that was very popular in Singapore in the early twentieth century. The Art Deco façade wall fronting the modern glass architecture of The Cathay is the remnant of what used to be Malaya’s tallest building. Previously known as Cathay Building, it was the first skyscraper and the first air-conditioned cinema in Singapore.
An image of the Former Cathay Building, 1960s[3]
After the war, the building was returned to Loke Wan Tho, and was converted into a hotel and a cinema. In 1953, Loke formed an alliance with the managing director of Keris Film Productions Ho Ah Loke to found Cathay-Keris Studio. Located on East Coast Road, the local studio initially specialised in making Malay-language films. One of its first films, Buluh Perindu (‘Bamboo of Yearning’, 1953), was the first Malay movie to be screened in colour. Cathay-Keris Studio also produced Pontianak (1957), a tale about a female vampire, which became a major box-office hit in Cathay Cinema; the studio went on to make four sequels to the movie.

The beginning of the Indonesian-Malaysian Konfrontasi (Confrontation) in 1963 meant the loss of the Indonesian market for locally produced films. Shaw Organisation’s Malay Film Production, a competitor of Cathay-Keris Studio in the production of Malay movies, closed in 1967. In 1973, the latter released its last film, Satu Titik di Garisan (‘A Point on the Line’), marking the end of the golden era of Singapore cinema and Malay film-making industry in the early 1970s.[4]
History of the Cathay building in Singapore
Plaza Singapura
Plaza Singapura, built in the mid-1970s, was among the first shopping centres on Orchard Road. In its heyday, Plaza Singapura was one of the most popular leisure hangouts for families and youth of all races. It led the way in adopting the all-in-one shopping concept and catered to a wide spectrum of shoppers. The idea of having anchor tenants in a shopping centre to attract visitors was also pioneered by Plaza Singapura.
Plaza Singapura was popular with its patrons since its opening as its selection of stores built the shopping centre’s reputation as a place for the family. One of the earliest anchor tenants in Plaza Singapura was Yaohan department store. Yaohan drew visitors as it was a one-stop shopping destination that offered a convenient, family-oriented and comfortable shopping experience. It had one of the first in-store bakeries, which popularised the “an-pan” (a soft bun filled with Japanese red bean paste). Such was the popularity of Yaohan and its strong association with Plaza Singapura that the shopping centre was simply referred to as “Yaohan” from the mid-1970s.
An advertisement for Yaohan, Plaza Singapura[5]


In addition to shopping, Plaza Singapura had many tenants catering to family and lifestyle needs. Children were brought to Yamaha music school for piano lessons, followed by a meal at Swensen’s; this was considered “a real treat in those days”. Ponderosa restaurant as well as Times the Bookshop, with its cosy atmosphere of a café in a bookstore, were favourite locations for family outings. Shizuoka Yajimaya, one of the few Japanese bookstores at the time, first opened in Plaza Singapura. It was fondly remembered as a place for children and teenagers to frequent in the mid-1970s to 1980s. Notably, it offered a magazine reservation service for editions-on-demand delivery to customers’s homes, and books on origami (Japanese folding paper art) with varying levels of difficulty.[6]
Macdonald house bombing

On 10 March 1965 at 3:07pm, just seven minutes after some 150 employees were closing their accounts for the day, two rogue marine commandos, Usman bin Haji Mohamed Ali and Harun bin Said, detonated a nitroglycerin explosive near the lift on the mezzanine floor of the building.

The bomb ripped through the lift and caused an inner wall to collapse, resulting in a mass of rubble collapsing into the bank of the ground floor. Every window within a hundred yards was shattered and extensive damage was done to nearby vehicles.[7]

A scene after the bombing of the MacDonald House that killed 3 people and injured 33 others.[8]

The MacDonald House bombing was the worse of the 42 bombings that occurred in Singapore during the period of Indonesian Confrontation or Konfrontasi(1963-1966), an era that arose as a result of Indonesia’s opposition to Singapore’s merger with Malaya.




























[1] Savage& Yeoh, Toponymics: A study of Singapore Street names, Eastern Universities Press, 2003, page 110
[2] Thimbuktu, Ways Done in the Past - Laundry Services, < http://blogtoexpress.blogspot.sg/2012/03/ways-done-in-past-laundry-services.html> , 2012
[4] Roots.sg, Former Cathay Building (now The Cathay), < https://roots.sg/Content/Places/national-monuments/former-cathay-building-now-the-cathay> , 2016
[5] Image taken from: https://www.pinterest.com/kwoksrus/old-singapore/
[7] Roots.sg, Macdonald House Bombing, < https://roots.sg/learn/stories/macdonald-house-bombing/story> , 2016
[8] Ibid.

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