Chophouse (building)

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A Chophouse in Singapore is a distinctive type of terrace building providing both a shop front on the ground floor and accommodation on the first floor. In the late 19th and early twentieth century, the rapidly expanding population of Singapore became seriously overcrowded in the existing chophouse accommodation and many bulidings were greatly extended into further floors and extensions were added at the back.

As more immigrants came, both the houses and individual rooms were subdivided into a tiny dark airless cubicle holes. Many house designed for only a single family would end up with ten or more families living in them. There was little or no privacy or sunlight, with poor or absent sanitation and little room to cook or prepare and eat food.

The subsequent major re-housing effort, which also housed the many hundreds of thousands living in palm shack slums, resulted in the demolition of the great majority of the chophouses and only relatively few remain in Singapore today many concentrated in little India.