CITY HALL 2.
The City Hall was built by public subscription on land granted by the Government, and was completed on June, 1869. It was formally opened on November 2 that year (almost exactly 65 years ago) by H.R.H. the Duke of Edinburgh, who was on a visit to the Colony at the time.
The idea of building a civic centre had originated in 1861, when a meeting was held at the Hongkong Club to consider the project. A provisional committee was formed in 1863 for the purpose of getting the scheme put through, and it issued a report in 1864, in which year Government granted the site. In August, 1866, at a public meeting called for consideration of the plan the tender for construction of the building was accepted; and the foundation stone was laid on Saturday, February 23, 1867, by the Governor of the period, Sir Richard Macdonnell.
Perhaps the most interesting part of old records of public events is to be found in speeches made at the time. Whatever the audience may have thought of the rhetoric of the occasion; however boring or flamboyant, as the case might be, the utterances of contemporary speakers; the historian rejoices that those men had been so comprehensive in their survey of current events; and even flights of fancy - often strangely prophetic leave us to-day a record of the outlook and ambitions of the period under review.
It is thus with the Major speech delivered when the foundation stone of the City Hall was laid. In the light of more recent happenings, there is much in the utterance to comment upon and analyse. I shall reproduce this most interesting speech in full - a portion to-day and the remainder subsequently so that readers may judge of the outlook in Hongkong of the Sixties.
In the newspaper report of Monday, February 25, 1867, we find the following summary of the proceedings. The italics are mine:
A large party, among which were several ladies, assembled at the parade ground about one o'clock on Saturday afternoon to witness the ceremony of laying the corner stone of the new City Hall. Shortly after one His Excellency the Governor accompanied by Lady Macdonnell and their guests, His Royal Highness the Duke de Penthievre, the Count de Beauvoir, Captain Fauvel, and Lieutenant Brinkly, arrived, and the party at once proceeded to the north-east end of the enclosure, where a scaffolding was erected over the trenches in which the foundation was to be laid. Here the corner stone was suspended on a pair of shears directly over its resting place. Mr. Rennie, the chairman of the committee, and His Excellency then descended into the trench, and the stone was lowered and duly cemented in its place, and
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