My Old Singapore Road Maps

Below are the oldest copies of the Singapore Street Directory I have in my house…until what I have found at my mother’s house at Haig Road on last Sunday. Ha I believed Peter and Chun See may even have older copies than this since they are at least 10yrs my senior. Frankly buying the Singapore Street Directory is like buying First Day Covers issues, every now and then new edition come out due to more new roads being built.

Credit : Singapore Government, Chief SurveyorOn the left is the Chinese Edition (1976) which is based on the English Edition (1975) and on the right is the English Edition (1988).

Now I have another even older map of Singapore from the Shell. The year 1959 was written on the inside cover of the map;

Credits for all the Shell Map Reproduction: Shell, Singapore Government Survey Department.

So this map was prepared by SIT (Singapore Improvement Trust, which is the ‘ancestor’ of HDB) in 1956;

Let’s take a look at this old map;

Only this part of Singapore was reproduced in the map;

Below are some of the Places Of Interests in the 50s where a number of them were no longer around now;

Now let’s take a close up view of this old map and see what’s in 50s;

You can see the Singapore Airport at the Paya Lebar from the above map, but has it been completed then? Guess… Of course all the expressways like PIE, ECP, etc.. were not built then. Also Singapore size then was much smaller before the major land reclamation from 60s to 90s.