Directory_and_Chronicle_1896 — Page 639

HONGKONG

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and the other for Chinese, below the Bonham Road. The Government Civil Hospital is a large and well designed building affording extensive accommodation, situated in the Western part of the town. The Alice Memorial Hospital, situated at the corner of Hollywood Road and Aberdeen Street, is a useful and philanthropic institution, which is also the headquarters of the Hongkong College of Medicine for Chinese; affiliated with it is the Nethersole Hospital on Bonham Road. The Royal Naval Hospital occupies a small eminence near Bowrington. The Queen's College, a handsome and commodious structure, which stands on a fine site having its chief frontage on Staunton Street, is the home of the chief Government educational institution in the colony. It was opened in 1889. The Tung Wa Hospital, a Chinese institution, occupies a large and roomy building. The Barracks for the garrison are extensive, and constructed with great regard to the health and comfort of the troops, and the buildings belonging to the Naval Establishment are substantial and spacious. The cantonments lie, on both sides of the Queen's Road, between the Cricket Ground and Arsenal Street, Wanchai. There are also extensive Barracks at Kowloon, in which the "Hongkong Regiment" are quartered. Head-quarter House, the residence of the General in Command of the Troops, occupies a pleasant elevation overlooking the cantonments. A new and commodious Central Market was opened in 1895. The building of the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank is large, handsome, and massive, and would do credit to any city. It occupies a fine site next to the City Hall, and has frontages on Queen's Road and Connaught Road. The exterior walls and elegant fluted pillars are of dressed granite, and the offices on the Queen's Road frontage are crowned with a large dome. The Praya wall, which was reconstructed in 1879-80, is a work of much solidity and strength, of dressed granite with a strong backing of concrete, and has successfully withstood some heavy seas. The present Praya will not, however, long continue to be the water frontage, as the reclamation of a further strip of land from the foreshore is in progress, which will make the existing Praya an inland street from the City Hall in the centre of the city to the Sailors' Home near West Point. Two sections of this reclamation are now completed: one near the Sailors' Home, and the other from Murray Wharf to the point where Ice House Street debouches, which has an area of 10 acres. The Clock Tower, near Pedder's Wharf, was erected by public subscription in 1862, and the illuminated clock was presented to the Colony by the firm of Messrs. Douglas Lapraik & Co. The tower, though of fair proportions and height, is now somewhat dwarfed by the lofty new building of the Hongkong Hotel.

The chief religious buildings are: St. John's Cathedral (Anglican), which occupies a commanding site above the Parade Ground, erected in the year 1842, and is a Gothic- church of considerable size but with few pretensions to architecture. It has a square tower, with pinnacles, over the western porch, and possesses a peal of bells. A new chancel was built in 1869-70, the foundation stone of which was laid by the Duke of Edinburgh on the 16th November, 1869. A handsome stained window in the east end, over the altar, to the memory of the late Mr. Douglas Lapraik, another in the north transept erected in 1892 to the memory of the late Dr. Stewart, formerly Colonial Secretary, and one in the south transept to the memory of those who perished in the wreck of the Bokhara are the chief adornments of the interior. It also possesses a fine three-manual organ containing 47 stops, erected in 1887. St. Peter's (Seamen's) Church, at West Point, close to the Sailors' Home, is a neat Gothic erection with a spire. It also has a stained glass window, presented in 1878. St. Stephen's Church, for Chinese, was built in 1892. It is a neat building in red brick with white facings, with a tower and spire about 80 feet high, standing on the Pokfo- lum Road side of the Church Mission compound. Union Church, a pleasing edifice in the Italian style of architecture, with a spire, and containing accommodation for about 500 persons, formerly stood in Staunton Street, but was rebuilt in 1890, on the plan of the old building, on a new site above the Kennedy Road, together with a parsonage adjoining. This church possesses an organ, and the three rose windows are filled with stained glass. A small Wesleyan chapel stands at the junction of Queen's Road and Kennedy Road. The Roman Catholic Cathedral is situated in Glenealy ravine, near the Botanic Gardens, and is a large structure in the Gothic style; the bell tower is at present incomplete, and the central tower is furnished with an insignificant wooden apology for a spire. It was opened for worship in 1888. St. Joseph's Church, in- Garden Road, is a neat edifice erected in 1876 on the site of one destroyed by the great typhoon of 1874; St. Anthony's Church on the Bonham Road, near West Point, is an ugly structure, erected in 1892 by the munificence of a late Portuguese resident; St. Francis' Church, at Wanchai, and the Church of the Sacred Heart, at West Point, Are small and unattractive structures. There is a Jewish Synagogue in Staunton