Blackhead Point

Blackhead Point
The time ball tower in 1908.
Blackhead Point Signal Tower in 2007.

Blackhead Point (黑頭山, lit. "black head hill"), also known as Tai Pau Mai (Chinese: 大包米) indigenously, Tsim Sha Tsui Point or Signal Hill (Chinese: 訊號山), was a cape before any reclamation in Tsim Sha Tsui, Kowloon, Hong Kong. It remains as a small hill near the coast.

History

Blackhead Point was named after a German businessman in Hong Kong named Friedrich Johan Berthold Schwarzkopf, who naturalised as a British citizen and anglicised his name as Blackhead.

It was where typhoon signals were hoisted in Hong Kong because it is the highest hill near the middle of Victoria Harbour. Signal Hill Tower (訊號塔) was built in Edwardian style in 1907[1] to house a time ball apparatus previously located in the nearby present-day Former Marine Police Headquarters Compound.[2] The time ball of the Hong Kong Observatory was operated there from January 1908 to June 1933, dropping once daily from 1908 to 1920, and twice a day from 1920 to 1933. The dropping of the time ball ceased in June 1933: the method used to check the marine chronometers had become obsolete, in comparison with radio-telegraphy and telephony.[3]

Today

Blackhead Point is now the site of a park, Signal Hill Garden, opened in 1980. Signal Hill Tower is still standing and was listed as a Grade II historic building[4] in 1981,[3] and as a Grade I historic building since 2009.[5]

References

  1. ↑ East Rail Extension - Hung Hom to Tsim Sha Tsui
  2. ↑ History of Hong Kong Time Service
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 Brief Information on Proposed Grade I Items. Item #47
  4. ↑ List of Graded Historic Buildings in Hong Kong (as at 18 September 2009)
  5. ↑ List of the 1,444 Historic Buildings in Building Assessment (as of 27 December 2013)

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Blackhead Point.

Coordinates: 22°17′46″N 114°10′27″E / 22.29611°N 114.17417°E