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National Library Board
Story Maps

Raffles Place in the 60s

15 December 2021

Explore the buildings and landmarks that once stood in Raffles Place

A black-and-white photo of Raffles Place in the 1960s with a park and surrounding buildings; text reads "Raffles Place in the Sixties".

Initially known as Commercial Square, Raffles Place has undergone many changes since it was demarcated as a commercial district in the 1822 Singapore Town Plan. During the colonial period, Raffles Place witnessed the construction of a series of architecturally beautiful buildings that housed mercantile companies, banks and shops. By the time Singapore gained independence in 1965, Raffles Place had become a prime location surrounded by some of the finest looking buildings in the country.

Find out the name and history of these buildings in this story map.

View the story map in full screen (opens in new tab) or on your mobile device by scanning the QR code below.

QR code with GO.gov.sg and overlapping interlocked 'G' logo at the center.
Notes

  1. This story map does not show a comprehensive coverage of the streets in Raffles Place.

  2. The base map used in this story map is the Singapore Land Authority's OneMap (opens in new tab).

  3. This story map used related Infopedia articles and other NLB digitised resources in NL Online (opens in new tab), BiblioAsia (opens in new tab), and Roots (opens in new tab) as references. It also consulted the following books: Singapore Street Names: A Study of Toponymics (opens in new tab) (2013), What’s in the Name?: How the Streets and Villages in Singapore Got Their Names (opens in new tab) (2018), Ray Tyers’ Singapore: Then & Now (opens in new tab) (2018), Singapore: A Guide to Buildings, Streets, Places (opens in new tab) (1988), In Granite and Chunam: The National Monuments of Singapore (opens in new tab) (1996), and Singapore: A Pictorial History 1819-2000 (opens in new tab) (1999).

Image Credit

Photo from Arshak C Galstaun Collection, courtesy of National Archives of Singapore (opens in new tab)