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Looking Across Hugh Low Bridge Towards The Lam Looking Building
This photograph shows a view of Hugh Low Bridge, Ipoh. In the background The Lam Looking Building housing the Celestial Hotel, Cabaret/Dance Hall and Lam Looking Bazaar can be seen.
We have the following information about lot Nos. 57, 55 and 53 Hugh Low Street:
Ngai C O told us that the shop next to the Lam Look Ing Building (extreme right) was once a textile retailer.
According to Ipoh Remembered: Before the war, in the mid-’30s, both lots were a photo studio owned by a Mr. Lee. He came from a Singapore family famous for its photographers; his brothers and cousins owned many studios up and down the peninsula, including another one in Ipoh. After the war, in the late ’50s and early ’60s (and perhaps earlier or later as well), only one of the two lots — not the one immediately at the corner but its neighbor on Hugh Low Street — used to be a cloth shop where women went to buy fabric of various kinds.
Ngai C O also mentioned that there was a fire which damaged this corner building, most likely in the early 1980s. Today, lot Nos 57 and 55 have been converted into a hotel - Hotel Abby. The textile shop like many of the shops, was still in business when in 1980; the economic spiral came around 1985 with the collapse of the tin mining industry, hence leading to the closure of many businesses.
To read more about Sir Hugh Low, click here.
To read more about the Hugh Low Bridge, click here.
To read more about the construction and subsequent uses of the Lam Looking Building, click here.