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+ zoom: click on photos
1 - Chinatown Point
2 - Jamae Mosque
3 - Sri Mariamman Temple
4 - Siang Cho Keong Temple
5 - Al-Abrar Moschee
6 - Thian Hock Keng
7 - Nagore Durgha
When Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles landed in Singapore in January 1819, Chinese merchants, peasants, fishermen and pirates had already been living there. In the following years the Chinese immigration, mainly from South-China, grew extensively. By the mid-1820s over 3.000 Chinese lived in Singapore.
The Chinese immigration grew even further as Singapore was declared the seat of government of the British Straits Settlements. The overall population of Singapore during the mid-1830s marked about 20.000, from which the Chinese were the largest group.
According to Raffles' masterplan, the Chinese settled mostly to the south-west of the Singapore River. They initially lived around the area of Telok Ayer Street, which at that time was directly on the water front (Telok Ayer is Malay for "Water of the Bay"). In 1887 the adjacent Telok Ayer Basin was filled with earth due to land reclamation procedures.
Beginning in the 1840s Chinatown outgrew the original Telok Ayer area until it reached today's New Bridge Road.
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