| Hongkong Hotel 香港大酒店 |
|
|---|---|
| The Hongkong Hotel on the Central Praya (c.1900); Jardine Matheson opposite | |
| Opening date | 1868 |
| Closing date | 1952 |
| Owner | The Hongkong Hotel Company |
| Floors | 6 |
The Hongkong Hotel was Hong Kong's first luxury hotel, modelled after sumptuous London hotels. It was opened on Queen's Road and Pedder Street in 1868.[1] , and expanded onto the Victoria Harbour waterfront of Victoria City in 1893.
The original hotel, opened in 1868, stood roughly on the site of the present Central building at Queen's Road Central and Pedder Street. It was owned by The Hongkong Hotel Company, which later became The Hongkong and Shanghai Hotels, Limited, current owner of The Peninsula Hotels chain.[2]
In the late 1880s a six-storey north wing was built on the waterfront expanding the hotel, with entrances on Pedder Street, Queen's Road and Praya Central (now Des Voeux Road Central). Competing in all respects with the Peak Hotel, owned by The Star Ferry Company, the management provided a special launch to meet arriving passengers on incoming P&O mail steamers and ferry them direct to the hotel's pier.
Even after the north wing burned down in 1929, the original part of the hotel, especially the large Gripps restaurant, continued to be well used by the public, but the hotel was eventually closed in 1952.[3]
A six-storey north wing of the hotel facing the waterfront opened in 1893. It replaced the Melcher's Building, which itself was formerly owned by Dent & Co., where the west wing of its "princely" headquarters was located.[4]
Completed in 1893;[5] the hotel burned down on New Year's Day, 1926.
The site was acquired by Hong Kong Land in 1928, and Gloucester Tower was constructed in 1932. It was redeveloped into The Landmark in 1979.[6]
...the Hong Kong Hotel, constructed after the model of large hotels in London. It has not proved to the shareholders a very profitable undertaking, being on a scale too vast for the requirements of the place. It is rented and conducted by a Chinaman, and none but Chinese cooks and waiters are employed. The management is good and the hotel comfortable. To the visitor, the large dining hall presents an animated and interesting scene, and he finds on further experience that the arrangements are perfect and the fare unexceptionable. The native waiters are remarkable no less for promptitude and politesse than for the spotless purity of their light silk or linen robes, and the fluency of their "pidgin" English in which they converse; this is however a jargon intelligible only to the residents.