CITY HALL 3-4.
ILLUSTRATION.
Immediately after the stone was laid, while the Governor and the principal guests were still upon the scaffolding, a photograph of the scene was taken, and the camera was again brought into requisition at tiffin time.
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The explosion of which His Excellency speaks occurred on January 17, 1867, on a hulk in the harbour.
How optimistic, now, do we find those references to the museum, which has recently been dispersed, after some years of a pathetic mouldering display! Yet had early enthusiasm persisted, that decay need never have set in.
And when we look at the huge Bank premises arising where once stood the greater part of "the largest and most costly edifice" of those early years, we can truly realize that time never stands still, but ever brings changes and progress.
It might be noted that the City Hall was designed by a Frenchman, whose plans had been accepted in open competition: and but for the references in the speech I have quoted, even this architect's name, long forgotten, had possibly remained unknown.
Finally, we come to the question of the future of the foundation stone so well and truly laid. Presumably the portion of the City Hall building still standing, at one corner of which lies that historic stone, will also be pulled down in due course, when no longer required as temporary premises for the Hongkong Bank. Will the stone then be dug up and preserved, or will it be left undisturbed, to endure for all time underground?
Perhaps the corner where it lies might be set back, to allow of safer traffic negotiation at that point: if so, it is not too much to hope that a tablet will be erected nearby to mark the spot, and tell the Colony's future generations that within a short distance, where modern juggernauts roar past day and night, the foundation stone of a vanished civic centre was laid, amid much optimism and faith in the future, on February 23, 1867.
The rapid approach of the time when the new premises of the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank will be completed, reminds us that the portion of the City Hall occupied as temporary offices for the bank will be evacuated by the end of this year, and must ere long be demolished.
Thus will pass the last traces of the Colony's first civic centre.