Old schoolhouse to become hip hotel

Source : Straits Times - 17 Jul 2008

ITS rooms once housed students thumbing through textbooks and reciting Chinese poetry.

But next year, a pre-war building in Little India will start hosting well-heeled travellers keen on spending a night or two in hip luxury.

A hotelier known for his unconventional tastes is giving the Dickson Road building, famous for its facade of ornate tiles, a facelift.

The four-storey conservation building, the former premises of the Hong Wen School - one of Singapore’s oldest Chinese schools - was bought by Mr Loh Lik Peng this year.

He was behind boutique hotels New Majestic and 1929, both in Chinatown, which have been lauded in the international media for their fashionable interior designs. They, too, are in conservation buildings.

In the same vein, the as-yet-unnamed hotel will be pitched at young, trendy, high-spending travellers. Mr Loh has given three local design studios free rein to craft one floor each.

The building is expected to open as a 29-room hotel by the end of next year.

Guests, who will pay between $250 and $400 a night for a room, can expect eclectic graphics featuring spaceships, monsters and local retro imagery.

‘It’s not something that everyone will like, but that’s radical design for you,’ said Mr Loh.

He estimated the building was built in the 1920s or 1930s, going by its architectural style. It features European art nouveau-inspired tiles used on a scale that is unique to Singapore, said the Urban Redevelopment Authority, which gave the building conservation status in 1989.

It served as a residential complex until 1945, when Hong Wen School moved in, according to former student Lim Kim Yiang.

When the school moved to its current premises at Victoria Street in 1981, the Singapore Buddhist Federation took over the building.

The building joins a number of old schools that have recently been converted for commercial use. They include the former Methodist Girls’ School premises and the former Trinity Theological College campus.

Both are situated on Mount Sophia and have been turned into art complexes.

The new hotel joins a growing number of low- to mid-range places that have sprouted up in the area recently.