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The Art-deco Fair Park Shophouses (Now Demolished) Photograph 1
This photograph, kindly donated by Peter Wang Shaoming shows the art-deco Fair Park shophouses designed by the Danish architect B M Iversen and built, probably in 1939. Once bustling with a wide range of trades including bicycle repair, a Chinese restaurant ( The Hong Kong Restaurant) and an Indian liquor shop among others, unfortunately the block was demolished in 2009 resulting in the death of two people who were simply driving past the demolition. The block was on the left as you drove along Jalan Kamaruddin Isa (formerly known as Fair Park Road) from the stadium towards the General Hospital.
Fair Park as we know it today, bears no resemblance to the Fair Park of yesterday, for the original area simply contained these shophouses and behind them, 60 terraced houses built in 5 parallel rows of 10 separate blocks, all designed by Iversen and Co. The area, developed in 1939, was about two acres all told and roughly triangular in shape.
For 1939 these were substantial modern homes of three bedrooms and an indoors flushing toilet, the latter only seen in the homes of the mining towkays in those days. There was also a chimney for the cooking stove in the kitchen. Another amazing step forward for many! Again like the shophouses, the homes, which still stand today (2010) had art-deco overtones with concrete canopies above the windows among other refinements.
As you might imagine, this was no ordinary development at the time and with such niceties as a flushing toilet and an indoor kitchen, was very popular with the British colonials and the area became known as “the English Houses”, while just across the road towards Kampong Kepayang Putra were the wooden houses of the locals, who, during the Malayan Emergency were relocated to Kampung Simee New Village. However by 1957 and Merdeka, many of the colonials had left and Fair Park became the homes of local doctors, lawyers and well-off Chinese tin miners, remaining a well-to-do society. Perhaps that is why today’s much extended Fair Park is now a haven for those seeking medical treatment from the numerous clinics that operate there.
Now Iversen’s shophouses have gone and we understand the houses will soon also disappear to make way for a new development.
Ipoh Remembered shared this with us, about the Fair Park houses: "The houses, fifty-plus of them, were ready for occupation in 1940 and the shop-houses were ready in early 1941. After barely a year the Japanese arrived". With regards to the shop houses, "..there were different businesses there at different times. In the '60s and '70s there was a barber, for example. He and his employees were Indians but the customers were various!"
To read about Berthel Michael Iversen, click here.
To see the shophouses from the opposite end (Photograph 2), click here.