Adam Park is a beautiful colonial residential estate that was recently in the news, having been earmarked for conservation. Built from 1928 to 1932, the estate’s 19 residences housed Singapore Improvement Trust (SIT) and Municipal officers. The residences are among 500 residences that have been described as ‘black and white’ houses. The common term relates more to their appearance, rather than architectural style. This appearance is given to them by their typical whitewashed walls and black trimmings.
Here’s an entry on the estate that I wrote for Uncommon Ground: The Places You Know, The Stories You Don’t, as well as some photographs that I have taken in the estate:
Adam Park’s 19 black-and-white houses give the quiet residential quarter a sense of the typical estate that was built for the colonial administrator as a comfortable home away from home. The familiar facades, however, hide the marks of a more tumultuous period, when the area functioned as a Prisoner-of-War (POW) camp with more than 3,000 men crammed into many of the estate’s undamaged houses and service buildings.
Built as residences for Municipal officers and Singapore Improvement Trust (SIT) officers from 1928 to 1932, the 19 units—five of which were designated as Class I bungalows and the rest Class III—are of standard Public Works Department (PWD) designs (the designations are tied to the seniority of their intended occupants). Several interesting personalities lived within the estate, among which included Phillip Cooper Sands, a Municipal Electrical Engineer and nephew of the famous Frank Cooper Sands who was the founder of scouting in Singapore.
The charmed life of Adam Park’s inhabitants would come to an abrupt end with the arrival of the war. With the threat of invasion, the estate was abandoned in February 1941 and would actually experience devastation on 15 February 1942 when some of the last battles were fought there before Singapore’s fall.
From April 1942 to January 1943, a few of Adam Park’s houses were used to accommodate some 2,000 Australian and 1,000 British POWs as they built the Syonan Jinja shrine at the nearby MacRitchie Reservoir. The Shinto worship place was constructed to commemorate the first anniversary of the Japanese capture of Singapore. The jinja is depicted in a set of sketches made by an Australian POW Pte Robert Boyed Mitchell, who thought the shrine beautiful even if he hated his captors.
The set of drawings also contains illustrations that depict a bomb-damaged Adam Park house identified as the POW chapel and canteen. They also included sketches of the murals that were painted by another POW, Captain Eric Andrews, to decorate the chapel. The house, which was repaired, remained forgotten with its murals hidden under several coats of paint. It wasn’t until 2015 that the murals were seen again as a result of the Adam Park Project, a battlefield archaeology effort initiated in 2009 by Jon Cooper, which made a positive identification of the chapel house.
The seven-year project also yielded a wealth of physical evidence that was used to provide a more detailed picture of the battles that took place on the estate grounds.
Another piece of POW life that recently surfaced is a calendar that was maintained by a POW—it was discovered in an annex to one of the houses. The calendar, dated from September to December 1942, is marked with the word “PAY” on days when the POW was paid. The money he earned could apparently be used in the canteen located within the chapel.
Today, the houses, including the chapel house, are well restored and the chapel murals have been placed behind a fibreboard panel for protection. One house, No. 7, has a particularly interesting past. Originally configured for SIT’s bachelor officers, it was where the 1st Cambridgeshire Regiment defending Adam Park from 12 to 15 February 1942 had their headquarters. From 1987 to 2014, the National University of Singapore Society used it as a clubhouse. The unit is currently being transformed into an academy.
