Office Spaces Tanjong Pagar

Tanjong Pagar used to be called Salinter or Salintar which means “a fishing village.” This name is attributed to the many kelong, a kind of fishing trap made from wood stakes and cross pieces, which lined the coast of Tanjong Malang village all the way to what is Tanjong Pagar today. According to a local legend, the locals in Singapore used to suffer from vicious swordfish attacks so they built a barricade of banana stems along the coast as instructed by the king, Sri Maharajah, so that the barricade would wind up trapping the snouts of swordfishes as they attacked.

Since the 1600s, Tanjong Pagar served as an enclave for thousands of Chinese and Indian migrant dock workers between the docks and the town. At the time, this gave rise to much traffic between the docks and the town and rickshaws became prevalent in the area. Due to their popularity, the government even put up a Jinricksha Station at the junction between Tanjong Pagar Road and Neil Road in 1904. 

With more and more workers crowding Tanjong Pagar, land prices in Tanjong Pagar went up and attracted rich Chinese and Arab traders to buy properties there. Meanwhile, the rapid increase in population also led to overcrowding, pollution, and problems with opium smoking and prostitution so that Tanjong Pagar eventually deteriorated into an inner-city ghetto.

Still, many benefited from Tanjong Pagar’s rich soil. Europeans and wealthy Chinese bought huge plots of land in the 1830s and ‘40s to be used for planting gambier, nutmeg, and fruits. This gave rise to jobs and soon more villages were erected in the district with more and more Hokkien people moving in. 

Come World War II, Tanjong Pagar was predominantly populated by the Hokkien working class and some Indians. By the latter half of the 1990s, the Suez Canal was opened and steamships became popular. This led to the development of Tanjong Pagar’s naturally deep harbour into the New Harbour, which we know today as Keppel Harbour. This signalled the beginning of Tanjong Pagar’s growth until it became highly urbanised in the late 1900s. Hills were levelled, many roads were built, and commercial and residential properties proliferated. In the mid-1980s, Tanjong Pagar was the first area gazetted under Singapore’s conservation plan. When the plan was implemented, many of the area’s infrastructures were restored to how they originally looked and Tanjong Pagar changed into a fashionable district known for its thriving businesses, cafés, bars, and restaurants.