We've tried to ensure the information displayed here is as accurate as possible. Should there be any inaccuracies, we would be grateful if you could let us know at info@ipohworld.org . All images and content are copyright.
(Please click on the thumbnail for a bigger image.)
The Chua Cheng Bok Building, Ipoh
The pictures show a divided back postcard. We estimate the date to be 1938, based on the postmark shown in the second picture. The first picture shows the Chua Cheng Bok building, at the corner of Brewster Road and Horley Street. As can be seen on the side of the building, one of the businesses which operated from the Chua Cheng Bok building is Huttenback, Lazarus & Sons Ltd.
According to one of our Blog readers - Charlie - "During the sixties and seventies, the main corner building used to house the OCBC bank. The entrance towards the right of the picture, of the same building were located offices of Accountants etc. One or two still operate from here, but the Main building and all of the ground floor is vacant now!"
Lam Yuen Yi and Hasbi also mentioned a Malay restaurant - Restoran Semenanjung - operating on the ground floor of this building, from around the 70s till 2010.
Ipoh Remembered (another Blog Reader) shared the following with us:
The (Chua) Cheng Bok Building, designed by a couple of architects from the firm of Stark & McNeill (Ipoh), was completed by 1931 (a busy year for that section of Brewster Road, but that’s another story; and the firm of Stark and McNeill virtually fell apart the very next year, but that’s another story as well). Huttenbach, Lazarus & Sons were tenants in the building for only one year, 1931-1932. In November of ’32, their Ipoh business and their offices in the Cheng Bok building were both taken over by Sime, Darby.
This building was also the residence of other businesses, as Ipoh Remembered tells us:
Sime, Darby — the old Malacca firm — was an original tenant. Chua Cheng Bok came from a Malacca family, and John Sime was a friend of the Chuas and a director of their firm, Cycle & Carriage. Sime, Darby opened a branch on Belfield Street in Ipoh in the early ’20s. When the Cheng Bok Building opened in 1931, Sime, Darby had already moved in; and they were in the building until at least the late ’50s: a period of thirty years, perhaps more. Another long-term tenant was the American office-equipment conglomerate Remington Rand, which also stayed for about thirty years. The firm, founded in the late ’20s, came to Malaya in the early ’30s and was soon in Ipoh. The earliest managers in Ipoh were Indian gentlemen (whose names I wish I could recall). After the war, the company resumed its tenancy and the last time I looked, in the mid-’60s, it was still there — but I am sure it is not there any more, not least because the conglomerate itself no longer exists.
The Perak Turf Club was another original tenant and spent about a decade in the building. Its previous offices in town were on Belfield Street, then Hale Street. It moved into the Cheng Bok Building in November, 1931. At the time Charles “Bunny” Byers was Club Secretary (a position he held for more than two decades). During the Occupation, the Japanese insisted that the races keep going but the Club itself went into forced hibernation. After all, most of its members had left town. In ’46, the Club re-opened for business but not in the Cheng Bok Building. It was first in temporary “digs” at Grenier’s place on Station Road, then in the chambers of the Hong Kong & Shanghai Bank back on Belfield Street.
Then there were the Storch Brothers — jewelers David and Isidore. Most readers today likely have not heard of them but they, like the Turf Club, were tenants for about a decade, from the Building’s early days until the war arrived. I explained above why one of the original tenants, Huttenbach, Lazarus, left Ipoh after only one year in the building. Their spot was given to Sime, Darby and, in turn, the Storches moved into Sime, Darby’s newly vacant space. David and Isidore were recent arrivals in Ipoh: they had come in the late ’20s from KL and by the time they moved into the Cheng Bok Building they had already sold a number of remarkably expensive baubles to clients in Ipoh. Alas, the war drove them away and they did not return afterwards. (Their in-laws, the famous furniture-dealing Frankels of Singapore, were also in Ipoh in those pre-war days but that shop was on Belfield Street near the intersection with Hugh Low Street, not in the Cheng Bok Building.)
We thank our Readers for all the above information.
The photograph of Chua Cheng Bok was taken from https://www.geni.com