1960s Malaysia Johore Bahru Government Building Sultan Ibrahim Tower M3 Postcard

Title
1960s Malaysia Johore Bahru Government Building Sultan Ibrahim Tower Postcard

Front
Colour photographic view of the Sultan Ibrahim Building, the state secretariat and government offices at Johore Bahru in the state of Johore, Malaysia, seen from the forecourt at an angle.

The building is a large five-storey structure faced in pale cream render, designed in a distinctive blend of modern classical massing with Malay, Saracenic and Art Deco detail. Its long principal range extends to the right, with regular ranks of rectangular and arched windows set between plain pilasters, deep projecting eaves cornices at each setback level and a balustraded parapet.

At the centre rises the great square clock and observation tower, its plain shaft pierced by narrow window slits and grilles, opening at the summit into an arcaded belvedere of pointed arches beneath a broad oversailing flat roof with a bracketed cornice, crowned by a small gilded finial.

At the left, flanking the arched main entrance, stand two slender ornamental minaret-like turrets with tiered canopies and pointed finials, above a projecting entrance porch with a tall recessed arch, columns and a domed pavilion behind.

In the foreground a long open-sided car park shelter with a corrugated roof on slender steel posts runs across the front of the building, filled with parked motor cars of 1950s and early 1960s type, including a prominent red and white station wagon and various pale saloons. A signboard stands on the grass at the right foreground, a driveway curves across the lower left, and mature trees frame the view at the right beneath a blue sky with white cumulus cloud.

Back
Divided-back colour postcard, printed text in violet-blue.

Printed at the upper left:
“GOVERNMENT BUILDING,
JOHORE BAHRU.”

Printed at the upper centre: “M 3”

Printed in the right-hand panel: “POST CARD”

Within a scalloped box at the upper right: “PLACE STAMP HERE”

Printed across the foot: “PUB. BY:- S. W. SINGAPORE”

No stamp, postmark or handwriting is present; the card is unused.

Estimated Era
Circa 1958 to 1968. The Sultan Ibrahim Building, designed by Palmer and Turner and completed in 1940, served as the seat of the Johore state government and was for many years the tallest building in the state; it appears here in its unaltered post-war condition. The motor cars beneath the car park shelter are British, American and Australian models of the middle and later 1950s and early 1960s, including a station wagon of about 1960, which fixes the photograph to the early part of that decade. The card was published in Singapore, then the principal printing centre for Malayan view cards, and the spelling Johore rather than the later Johor is consistent with usage before and shortly after the formation of Malaysia in 1963. The card is unposted, so no postmark confirms a year of use.