Telok Ayer Basin
Telok Ayer Basin , often referred to as Telok Ayer Bay , was a water basin in Singapore that was accidentally created during backfill in a land reclamation project and backfilled during later projects of this type. The basin existed between approx. 1911 until the late 1990s and served most of the time as an anchorage for smaller merchant ships. The term telok ayer means “water bay ” in the Malaysian language, and this shorter name is used on some old maps to refer to the bank area at that time: only Telok Ayer (1860 as “Tulloh Ayer”, 1862 “Telok Ayer”, 1873 “Tuloh Ayer”) etc.). The Telok Ayer Market and, above all, Telok Ayer Street of the same name were later built in this area . The Chinese temple Thian Hock Keng , which was built in the street as thanks for the happy crossing, reminds of this fact to this day . At this point, south of the mouth of the Singapore River , is now Chinatown , which the city's founder, Sir Stamford Raffles , noted in his city map from 1822. The land expansion in this area, as well as the later conversion of the entire area into its current form, took place within the framework of several land reclamation programs: in the past two centuries (according to a source from 2010) the land area of Singapore has grown by a full 25 percent - from 578 on 719 square kilometers (2017).
history
The Telok Ayer reclamation project took place in several phases. The first major land reclamation project in Singapore began in 1879 and carried out near Telok Ayer Street that same year. In 1887 new land was created, which is now Cecil Street and Robinson Road, and Raffles Quay (renamed Shanton Way in 1951) was added in the early 1890s. Earth from nearby Mount Wallich was used for the embankments. A total of 42 acres or 17 hectares of new land has been reclaimed southeast of Telok Ayer Street. Collyer Quay was also expanded, to the south of the area the port of Tanjong Pagar was expanded and a new port was created (renamed Keppel Harbor in 1900).
At the turn of the millennium, however, more and more small ships such as junks continued to anchor directly at the mouth of the Singapore River. Relief should be provided by the creation of new anchorages along Raffles Quay between Johnstons Pier in the north and Tanjong Malang in the south. The plan was proposed in 1899, drawn up in 1902, and revised in 1904. The construction of a new bank fortification wall was planned, which should extend from Johnstons Pier in the north to Tanjong Malang in the south and should be about 1520 m long; the backfill between the mainland at that time and this wall was intended to gain 35.6 hectares of new land, which should enable better connections between the new port and the emerging business district. Around 1910 the work had to be interrupted: the subsoil proved to be unstable, which meant that the fortification wall could no longer be built. At that time, a total of 26 of the planned 35.6 hectares of land had been reclaimed and the wall, built from both the north and the south, was about 1255 m long. The work was suspended in order to later convert the resulting basin ( tidal basin , i.e. tidal basin on a map from 1911) into an anchorage for small ships, whereby the missing gap in the wall of almost 270 m was to be used as an entrance. Work resumed in 1930 and ended in 1932 - the name Telok Ayer Basin has been used since then; the unfinished parts of the wall appear on the maps as North Pier and South Pier . At that time, the former Telok Ayer Street was about 0.4 km from the shore.
Further developments
It was not until the 1970s that there were further land expansions in connection with the plans to build a new urban area: In the case of Telok, the project involved an artificial bay Marina Bay with surrounding mainland expansions at the mouth of the Singapore River Ayer Basin around the area ( planning area ) Marina South and especially Downtown Core in the Central Region , which is now roughly at the location of the basin. This work lasted until the 1990s: while the maps of Singapore in 1975 still show the Telok Ayer Basin in full size, the new section of Marina South becomes visible as early as 1978; Marina Bay and Marina East are built between 1987 and 1993, and Telok Ayer Basin ceases to exist in 1998.
Remarks
- ↑ City maps and maps of Singapore for the years mentioned here are available at: Historical Maps of Singapore , Department of Geography, National University of Singapore, online at: libmaps.nus.edu.sg
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e By Lim Tin Seng: Land From Sand: Singapore's Reclamation Story , in: BiblioAsia , quarterly magazine of the National Library Board , a government agency of Singapore, Volume 13 No. 1 (April 2017), online at: nlb .gov.sg / biblioasia / ...
- ↑ a b Telok Ayer Basin and Shenton Way , website of the state's National Heritage Board, online at: roots.sg / ...
- ↑ Telok Ayer Street , in: Infopedia , Server of the National Library Board, Singapore Government, online at: eresources.nlb.gov.sg /.../ SIP_656 ...
- ↑ Robinson Road , in: Infopedia , Server of the National Library Board, Singapore Government, online at: eresources.nlb.gov.sg /.../ SIP_179 ...
- ↑ Shenton Way , in: Infopedia , Server of the National Library Board, Singapore Government, online at: eresources.nlb.gov.sg /.../ SIP_726 ...
