Blue House refers to a 4-storey balcony-type

tenement A tenement is a type of building shared by multiple dwellings, typically with flats or apartments on each floor and with shared entrance stairway access. They are common on the British Isles, particularly in Scotland. In the medieval Old Town, i ...

block located at 72-74A

Stone Nullah Lane Stone Nullah Lane is a one-way street in Wan Chai, Hong Kong Island, Hong Kong. Named after Nullah, the water channel that until 1959 ran down its middle, it stretches from Lung On Street to Queen's Road East. The street is noted for its hist ...

Wan Chai Wan Chai is situated at the western part of the Wan Chai District on the northern shore of Hong Kong Island, in Hong Kong. Its other boundaries are Canal Road, Hong Kong, Canal Road to the east, Arsenal Street to the west and Bowen Road to th ...

Hong Kong Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China ( abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China on the eastern Pearl River Delt ...

. It is named after the

blue Blue is one of the three primary colours in the RYB colour model (traditional colour theory), as well as in the RGB (additive) colour model. It lies between violet and cyan on the spectrum of visible light. The eye perceives blue when obs ...

colour painted on its external walls. It is one of the few remaining examples of ''

tong lau Tong lau or ke lau are tenement buildings built in late 19th century to the 1960s in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Southern China, and Southeast Asia. Designed for both residential and commercial uses, they are similar in style and function to the shophouse ...

'' of the balcony type in Hong Kong and is listed as a Grade I historic building.

Historic background

The building was the original site of the first hospital 'Wah To Hospital' (aka "Wan Chai Kai Fong Hospital"), which was built in the 1870s in Wan Chai. The hospital, which provided Chinese medical services to local Chinese, was possibly the first hospital in the district.Revitalization / Preservation - Hong Kong Housing Society
After the hospital closed in 1886, the two-storey building was then used as a temple for Wah To, the revered Chinese physician from the

Three Kingdoms The Three Kingdoms () from 220 to 280 AD was the tripartite division of China among the dynastic states of Cao Wei, Shu Han, and Eastern Wu. The Three Kingdoms period was preceded by the Han dynasty#Eastern Han, Eastern Han dynasty and wa ...

period. The building was

demolished Demolition (also known as razing, cartage, and wrecking) is the science and engineering in safely and efficiently tearing down of buildings and other artificial structures. Demolition contrasts with deconstruction, which involves taking a ...

in 1920 and was built into four four-storey tenement blocks in 1922. After the

Japanese occupation of Hong Kong The Imperial Japanese occupation of Hong Kong began when the Governor of Hong Kong, Mark Aitchison Young, Sir Mark Young, surrendered the British Crown colony of British Hong Kong, Hong Kong to the Empire of Japan on 25 December 1941. The surr ...

in 1945. The building was subsequently used as a martial arts school and

Dit Da Die da () or dit da, is a traditional Chinese method of bone-setting used to treat trauma and injuries such as bone fractures, sprains, and bruises. Background Dit da originated in Guangdong, China, and was usually practiced by martial artists w ...

clinic by

Lam Cho Lam Cho (27 February 1910 – 29 March 2012) was the Hung Ga Grandmaster and Dit Da practitioner of the Lam Family Hung Ga lineage. He was noted to be the last martial arts Grandmaster who lived during the times of well-known martial artists Won ...

, the adopted nephew of

Lam Sai-wing Lam Sai-wing (1861? – 1943) was a Hung Gar martial artist. He was a student of the Chinese martial artist, acupuncturer and folk hero of Cantonese ethnicity, Wong Fei-hung. "Since my young years till now, for 50 years, I have been learning f ...

. The building was acquired by the government in the 1970s, and in 1990 the outer walls were painted blue, thus earning it the name ''Blue House''.Michael Ng
plan to revisit area's colorful history
, The Standard, April 1, 2006

Future revitalisation

All the upper floors of Blue House, apart from 72

, are timber structures. The two wooden stairs, with original elements intact, are well maintained. The building was part of a HK$100 million plan, unveiled by the

Housing Society A housing cooperative, or housing co-op, is a legal entity, usually a cooperative or a corporation, which owns real estate, consisting of one or more residential buildings; it is one type of housing tenure. Housing cooperatives are a distin ...

and the

Urban Renewal Authority The Urban Renewal Authority (URA) is a quasi-governmental, profit-making statutory body in Hong Kong responsible for accelerating urban redevelopment. History The authority's predecessor, the Land Development Corporation (土地發展� ...

, to preserve nine Chinese-style buildings in Wan Chai that were constructed during the 1920s. Blue House HK

The building has been preserved and revitalised in a traditional tea and medicine style. In 2007, the Urban Renewal Authority and the Development Bureau jointly announced that the residents of the Blue House, were to be allowed to stay in this historic monument. On the same year, one of the ground floor's shophouses of the building was occupied as a location of the '' Wan Chai Livelihood Place'', which was later renamed as the '' Hong Kong House of Stories'' in March 2012. The building closed for renovation in 2015. The building was fully renovated and opened in 2016. It won the 2017/2018 architectural prize in 2018.

Neighbourhood

The building is located on the corner of Stone Nullah Lane, King Sing Street and Hing Wan Street. Stone Nullah Street connects to Queen’s Road East facing Old Wan Chai Market Building. 85 Stone Nullah Lane is the headquarters and community centre of St James Settlement (Hong Kong). A non-profit community art space called Wan Chai Visual Archive was located in a tenement building at 9 Hing Wan Street. It was initiated by the building’s owner Goldig Investment Group 協利集團 and

Hong Kong Polytechnic University The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) is a public research university located in Hung Hom, Hong Kong near Hung Hom station. The University is one of the eight government-funded degree-granting tertiary institutions in Hong Kong. Founded ...

. Carl Gouw 吳家耀, representing the owner was its director and Alvin Yip was curator. Alvin Yip was director of the Jockey Club Design Institute for Social Innovation of

, and received the Ten Outstanding Young Persons Award in 2011. Carl Gouw and Alvin Yip were both directors of non-profit Hong Kong Ambassadors of Design. Wan Chai Visual Archive was opened in 2012 to the public with a ceremony attended by Salina Yan, Deputy Secretary for ''Home Affairs'' and James Settlement‘s CEO. It held exhibitions and events attended by government officials, consulate generals, entertainment celebrities, local, international artists and students. It encouraged the engagements of public and business sectors, non-profit organizations and the neighbourhood in the process of cultural and heritage preservation. The project is mentioned in the book ‘Urbanizing Carescapes of Hong Kong ‘ by Shu-mei Huang who wrote ‘By breaking their exercises of redevelopment into different components and phases, the operation could accumulate cultural capital for their future projects.’ Hong Kong (2017) - 533

References

External links

Preliminary Study on "Blue House"
{{Heritage conservation in Hong Kong , state=collapsed Grade I historic buildings in Hong Kong Monuments and memorials in Hong Kong Residential buildings in Hong Kong Wan Chai

Historic background

Future revitalisation

Neighbourhood

See also

References

External links