Title
1960s Hong Kong Banking District Central Hilton Bank of China K.P. Yuen Postcard 294
Front Description
Colour chrome photographic view, horizontal format, looking south from the reclamation at Edinburgh Place across Statue Square toward the banking and government quarter of Central, Hong Kong Island, with the green slopes of Victoria Peak rising behind.
At the left of centre stands the former Supreme Court building, a granite neo-classical structure of two storeys with a continuous colonnade of Ionic columns above an arcaded ground floor, a deep entablature, a red-tiled hipped roof and a prominent central dome with a ribbed golden-ochre finish and a small lantern and finial at its apex. Motor cars of early to mid 1960s type are parked in a row along its frontage, with pedestrians on the pavement before it.
Rising immediately behind and to the left is the Hongkong Hilton hotel, a tall modernist slab block with a regular grid of windows and pale spandrel panels, its name displayed in large white capitals across the upper façade: “HONGKONG HILTON”. Adjoining it to the right is the former Bank of China Building, a stepped Art Deco tower in pale stone with tall vertical window bays, recessed piers and a squared setback crown.
At the centre right stands the 1935 Hongkong and Shanghai Bank headquarters, a monumental stepped Art Deco block in pale stone, its central tower rising in receding tiers above flanking wings, with strong vertical mullions, a colonnaded lower storey and a flagstaff on the summit. To the right again is a further tall pale office block with regular fenestration and a stepped upper section, and at the extreme right a very large modern block with a dense uniform grid of small square windows across its full height — the Mandarin Hotel or an adjacent commercial tower of the same period. A further slab block with continuous window bands appears at the lower right.
The foreground and middle ground are occupied by Statue Square and the new Edinburgh Place layout. Broad paved plazas, geometric lawns, low retaining walls faced in white gridded tile, planting beds, young trees and shrubs are laid out in a strongly modernist arrangement, with wide flights of shallow steps and a sunken area at the right crossed by a light steel-framed shelter or covered walkway with a flat canopy roof. Palms and small ornamental trees are planted at the left. Metal railings and low balustrades edge the terraces.
Several hundred people are present, most densely gathered in the centre-right of the square, where white marquees or awnings and rows of stalls suggest a fair, exhibition or public event in progress. Smaller groups of pedestrians walk the paths and stand at the terraces, including a man in a dark suit and a group of women and children in summer dress in the left foreground, and further scattered figures across the plazas.
Behind the buildings rise the wooded slopes of the Peak in deep green, with white apartment blocks and villas scattered along the ridges and terraces of the Mid-Levels, and a taller white block visible at centre-left. The sky is bright blue with a bank of white cloud at the upper right. Colours are saturated in the typical chrome manner. The card has a plain white border on all four sides, the left edge showing a slightly rough or feathered finish.
Back Description
Divided back, printed in dark green ink on white stock. Upper left, in two lines of capitals: “THE BANKING DISTRICT, HONG KONG.” Centre top in large open capitals: “POST CARD”, with beneath it in spaced capitals: “FROM HONG KONG”.
Below, running across the card: “CORRESPONDENCE” at left and “ADDRESS” at right, separated by a vertical dotted dividing rule running down the centre of the card.
At the upper right, a square stamp box outlined in dark green containing three lines: “PLACE STAMP HERE”, with the series number “294” printed in bold inside the lower part of the box.
Along the left edge, set vertically and reading upward, in small capitals: “COLOR PHOTOGRAPH BY K. P. YUEN”.
No printer’s imprint appears at the foot of this card.
The card is unused and unposted. There is no stamp, no postmark, no address and no handwritten message of any kind; both the correspondence and address panels are entirely blank. No album mounting marks, pinholes, ink or pencil annotations are present. Light age toning and minor edge wear only.
Estimated Era
Circa mid to late 1960s. The chrome finish with white border, the divided back with separate “CORRESPONDENCE” and “ADDRESS” headings and the “POST CARD FROM HONG KONG” heading follow the standard Hong Kong tourist-card format of the period, and the series number 294 places this card late in the same numbered K. P. Yuen run as the Kai Tak (203), street scene (209), firework display (210), Cheung Chau (215), rickshaw (225), ladder street (271) and Kowloon City (292) cards. The architecture provides firm dating: the Hongkong Hilton opened in 1963, giving the earliest possible date for the photograph, while the former Supreme Court building with its dome and colonnade still stands intact in its pre-1978 form, before its conversion for use by the Legislative Council. The 1935 Hongkong and Shanghai Bank headquarters and the 1950 Bank of China Building are both present in their original state, decades before the 1980s towers that replaced and overshadowed them. The redeveloped Statue Square and Edinburgh Place landscaping shown here dates from the early 1960s reclamation works. K. P. Yuen was among the most prolific Hong Kong colour photographers of the 1950s and 1960s.
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