After you’ve lived your whole life in a place, you fall into the trap of thinking that things are how they have always been. Change happens so slowly you don’t notice it while it’s happening, and any changes that happened before your lifetime may as well be fairy tales.
While doing a bit of research into the history of my neighbourhood and its environs, I stumbled upon a blog post talking about how a section of Upper Thomson Road had been realigned. As you can see in the maps below, from the 1984 and 1988 editions of the Singapore Street Map, Upper Thomson Road used to run tightly against Westlake Avenue, but straightened out with the construction of MacRitchie Viaduct, running parallel to it instead.
Singapore Street Maps, 1984 (left) and 1988 (right):
I don’t know that anyone would consider this an earth-shattering change. Perhaps those who lived in Westlake Gardens estate, immediately adjacent to the realignment, might have found the character of the place changed a little bit. Nevertheless, I’d been fascinated recently by changes in our urban landscape and the invisible traces they leave behind, so I decided to take a look myself, and to make a multi-cache out of it.
This multi-cache will take you to six locations, including the GZ, and should take less than half an hour to do. It isn’t the most scenic or exciting multi-cache, but I hope that, like me, you’ll find something interesting in the ordinary.
Waypoint #1 - MacRitchie Viaduct (N 1° 20.536, E 103° 50.1682)
First stop: the cause of the realignment. MacRitchie Viaduct was constructed at a cost of $22 million, and took 20 months to complete, opening to the public on 27 Feb 1988. Spanning 800 metres, the viaduct linked Lornie Road to Upper Thomson Road, and was planed to ease traffic flow in the area.
GPS might be off. Climb the stairs and look for 504A4
Waypoint #2 - Remnants of the old alignment (N 1° 20.6845, E 103° 50.2812)
Standing in this triangular field, imagine for a moment the traffic whooshing right on top of you, as they turned the corner around Westlake Gardens estate, heading north up Upper Thomson Road.
Look for 2054B
Waypoint #3 - St. Theresa’s Home (N 1° 20.77, E 103° 50.2772)
Follow the road up to the gates of St. Theresa’s Home for the Aged, first established in 1935 by the Little Sisters of the Poor, and initially named after the French Catholic religious institute. The foundation stone for the current building complex was laid slightly afterwards, in 1937, by Sir Thomas Shenton, then Governor of the Straits Settlements. Catholic Welfare Services Singapore took over management of the Home on 1 July 2003.
C = Number of lines of Chinese on this gate
Waypoint #4 - Kampong San Teng Community Centre (N 1° 20.7583 E 103° 50.3308)
If you take a look again at the 1984 street map, you’ll notice that a road used to run from Upper Thomson Road, cutting across Marymount Road, into Kampong San Teng. As a child growing up in the 90s and going to school in Bishan, I was keenly aware of the fact that Bishan estate stood on the site of what used to be a massive Cantonese and Hakka cemetery. I wonder if kids going to school today feel the fact quite so acutely.
The road into Kampong San Teng continues to appear in the 1988 street map, albeit no longer from Upper Thomson Road, only vanishing in the 1998 edition. Also featuring on the 1984 map is Kampong San Teng Community Centre which, to gauge from the 1984 and 1988 street maps, used to sit roughly where this waypoint is, at the eastern entrance to the pedestrian underpass crossing under Upper Thomson Road, built at the same time as MacRitchie Viaduct.
GPS might be slightly off. Check that your hair and teeth are ok and look for 515D1
Waypoint #5 - Marymount Road (N 1° 20.8352, E 103° 50.3388)
The fifth and final waypoint lies a short distance up Marymount Road, constructed some time before MacRitchie Viaduct, in 1979. The road was opened in two phases, the first in July 1979, running from Thomson Road near Marymount Convent to where Marymount Station is today, and the second in August 1979, running the rest of the way to Ang Mo Kio Ave 6.
Like MacRitchie Viaduct, Marymount Road was also constructed to resolve traffic issues, providing drivers heading to and from the city a bypass around heavy traffic on Lornie and Braddell Roads coming up Upper Thomson. It seemed at first that the solution didn’t really work. I’ll leave it to drivers to decide whether it did eventually.
Look for E00m
Final Coordinates
N 1° 20.[C+E][A][A x (D-B)]
E 103° 50.[B+E][(AxD) + E][C]
A+B+C+D+E = 21
References and photo credits