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National Library Board
Story Maps

Streets of Kampong Glam

15 December 2021

Uncover the myriad interlocking stories encoded in the streets of Kampong Glam

People walking along a bustling street lined with shops and restaurants in Kampong Glam, Singapore, with tall buildings in the background.

The name of a place is a marker of identity – it can tell us a lot about that place, such as its history, culture and development. As its name suggests, Kampong Glam (or Kampong Gelam) is an ethnic enclave for the Malay community in Singapore, yet what do the road names, like “Arab Street” and “Jalan Sultan” mean?

Find out in this story map on the streets of Kampaong Glam.

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 the text "GO.gov.sg" and a logo of two interlocking geometric shapes in the center.
Notes

  1. This story map does not show a comprehensive coverage of the streets in Kampong Glam.

  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), Kampong Glam: A Heritage Trail (opens in new tab) (2012), 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 by Fabio Achilli via Flickr (opens in new tab) (CC BY 2.0)