Blake Pier, originally known as Pedder Wharf situated at the then waterfront facing today’s Des Voeux Road Central, was named in 1900 after Sir Henry Blake, the 12th Governor of Hong Kong (1898 to 1903). In 1904, upon the completion of the praya reclamation in Central District, Blake Pier was relocated to the new waterfront at the junction of Connaught Road and Pedder Street, where it continued to provide for the berthing of yachts, barges and sampans, etc. Blake Pier was originally covered by a thatched roof, which was later replaced by an elegantly classic cast iron roof.
Blake Pier once served as the landing place for new Governors and British royal dignitaries visiting Hong Kong, until this role was taken over by the first Queen’s Pier built in the mid-1920s at the waterfront of Connaught Road beside Blake Pier and Star Ferry Pier.
In 1965, when Blake Pier was demolished and re-built in situ, its cast iron roof truss was transferred to the Morse Park in Kowloon to provide for the cover of a pavilion. In 1993, the re-built Blake Pier was demolished to make way for reclamation works in Central District. The cast iron roof of Blake Pier was then further transferred to Stanley in 2007, where it was reinstated as the roof cover of a new pier — the Blake Pier at Stanley — built outside Murray House under the Government’s Stanley Waterfront Improvement Project. The historic roof truss and the classical architecture of the century-old Murray House together paint a picture of elegance for the Stanley waterfront.
Acknowledgement: copywriting by Dr. Joseph Ting, former Chief Curator of the Hong Kong Museum of History
About "PHOENIX":
Not knowing that there was a old cache GC3E4BF in this location when deploying this one. Thanks samshlau for providing the GC code of the original cache.
