THE
MAN YEE
BUILDING
ARCHITECTS:
KWAN, CHU & YANG.
HHL
I
Photograph of the Upper Ground Floor Arcade.
9
The growth of Hongkong has resulted in the spreading out of the business and commercial centre which was formerly principally confined to the City of Victoria, that part of the Island which was bounded by Murray Road, Pedder Street, Queen's Road and Connaught Road. The development of North Point since 1950 onward saw the establishment of an extensive shopping district in that area, and of course the growth of Kowloon's commercial and business centre has been phenomenal, Nevertheless, with the continued demand for office space, new commercial building projects of considerable size began to expand westward from Pedder Street, and during the past few years the Wing On Life Building, Commercial Press Building, Fu House, Yu To Sang Building and Li Po Chun Cham- bers have been erected.
The newest and by far the most impressive of these commercial build- ings which were recently completed is the Man Yee Building, which stands on a considerable area fronting on Des Voeux Road, Pottinger Street and Queen's Road. Several innovations were introduced into the design, the principal one being a shopping centre on the first floor in addition to the one on the ground floor, the two floors being linked by two escalators capable of handling a flow of 5,000 persons per hour. Although there are now a number of buildings in course of erection which incorporate this feature, the original idea for commercial build- ings was introduced in the Man Yee Building. The idea of having these two floors linked occurred to the architects because of a difference in level of 19'-0" between the Queen's Road end and the Des Voeux Road side, which difference in the new building puts the Queen's Road en- trance at the first floor level. Thus the public can enter that side, proceed through the length of the building and descend to the Des Voeux Road level