Singapore’s shophouses are rare, picture-perfect and hot property

As dawn breaks on Emerald Hill, just off the famed Orchard Road, dappled sunlight shines on rows of pastel- and cream-colored shophouse façades amid flowering trees and tweeting birds in what was once a nutmeg plantation. It’s magical, really: peaceful, refreshing and not too hot, it’s a perfect time to visit.

Built in sporadic stages after 1900, these constructions, many of which display architectural award plaques, are icons of the colonial era. While their styles range from Transitional (pre-Gothic) to Art Deco, they mesh together well thanks to codified guidelines outlined by Sir Stamford Raffles in his first town plan of 1822.

Shophouse architecture is a seamless melding of Eastern and Western building styles. Late-style façades, like those on Emerald Hill, feature Chinese porcelain tiles and batwing-shaped air vents, Malay timber fretwork, French windows, Portuguese shutters and Corinthian pilasters. They are narrow and terraced, squeezed into contiguous blocks with common party walls, and often feature a sheltered “five-feet way” at the front that serves as a pedestrian path between the home and the street. Original interiors have water features and open-air courtyards that bring light and air to otherwise dark center spaces. Prized for their myriad architectural elements, shophouses fascinate tenants, owners, tourists and history buffs.

Though once ubitiquitous on the island, many shophouses were bulldozed after Singapore gained independence in 1965 to make way for sprawling blocks of public housing and office skyscrapers. Those 6,000 that remain – in distinct commercial and residential districts on the island – are gazetted under strict conservation guidelines.

While the terraced homes on Emerald Hill were designed for residential use only, most others accommodated a business on the ground floor, with one or two floors of living quarters above. Today, it’s either one or the other: shophouse residential districts such as Emerald Hill, Cairnhill, Joo Chiat, Geylang and Tiong Bahru lie outside the downtown core, while their commercial counterparts – Chinatown, Duxton Hill and Tanjong Pagar – squeeze inside, surrounded by myriad contemporary towers.

During the early settlement days of the 1800s, the commercial districts belonged to plantation owners who grew cloves and nutmeg, irrigated by an underground spring that was later abandoned after a series of terrible blights. After wealthy Chinese merchant Chia Ann Siang bought what became Ann Siang Hill, the way was paved for development. Between 1903 and 1941, shophouses sprung up for use as remittance houses and clan association clubs for Chinese immigrants.

Today these 1,200 or so commercial buildings are a magnet not just for Singapore’s business elite, but also – thanks to their paucity and exemption from extra government stamp duties – for a handful of enterprising investors, both local and foreign. Investment firm Clifton Partners, for instance, started buying unrenovated commercial shophouses in the downtown core four years ago, transforming them as office rentals, and occasionally selling them when the price is right. The firm spends between S$300,000 to S$3 million on renovations that normally take six months.

Tellus Architects, a small specialist firm on Duxton Road, counts Clifton as one of its investment fund clients. “They give us a brief and a budget, and we work towards that so they can begin renting the properties,” says principal Gary Lim, who estimates the finished cost at between S$350 and $400 per square foot.

Currently Clifton’s S$250 million portfolio of 10 commercial shophouses generates yields of between 5 and 6% for shareholders. “In the last three to four years, the market has gone up a lot,” notes Clifton’s principal partner Zain Fancy. “These areas are hip and happening, and because shophouses are conserved, they retain the right street character and charm.”

In Tanjong Pagar, Mr Fancy renovated the upper storey of 9 Ann Siang Road – the barbershop Truefitt & Hill is on the ground floor – doubled its rental yield, and then sold it. Venture capital group NSI Ventures are the current tenants. “We wanted a slightly unconventional space,” says NSI partner Hian Goh as he shows me around the office – a mix of exposed brick and plaster, with hardwood floors – which includes a meeting room, galley kitchen, veranda and a loft where colleagues huddle behind computer screens. “We work with entrepreneurs, so relationships are most important. We find this architecture breaks barriers and helps us get to know people faster.” For NSI, the trendy location is perfect – just a two-minute walk from Chinatown and Telok Ayer MRT stations, and in the middle of a winding row of upmarket boutiques, restaurants, bars and hedge-fund offices.

Maria Arango and Diego Molina, partners in design firm Ong&Ong – who have won five heritage awards for shophouse restoration – rely on word of mouth for new business. And the clients keep coming – from Singapore, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia and Europe. “You can see three different eras on Ann Siang Road,” notes Arango. “Republican, Art Deco, the 1950s. That’s its beauty. I search history for design ideas.” She often goes on painstaking searches to find approved motifs for tiles, or wood carvings for pintu pagar half-doors. “Restoring shophouses can be expensive when you have unforeseen problems, such as crumbling walls or wood infested by termites,” Arango admits, recalling her first major residential restoration on Blair Road 15 years ago that featured an interior pool. At the time it sold for S$1.5 million; today it’s S$8 million. “These are jewels in the architectural arena. Prices will only go up.”

While Ong&Ong tries to remain faithful to original interior features when possible, most architects do not, according to Julian Davison, a local authority on shophouse design. He laments that owners in Singapore, unlike those in the Malaysian city of Penang, mostly “vandalise” the interior to create “pseudo-Modernist white cubes with marble floors, Japanese-style ponds and glass staircases”. “I would direct tourists to visit the Baba House [an exemplar of preservation on Neil Road], and stroll up Emerald Hill,” Davison suggests, “bearing in mind that behind the beautiful façades there is nothing left.”

Meanwhile, on Emerald Hill, chirping cicadas signal that night is falling. In the distance, one house lights up a Buddha against its red shophouse wall, while another burns incense from a hanging basket in the door frame. Towards Orchard Road, Emerald Hill’s Peranakan Place – home to three popular bars – is filling up. The air cools once again as these Singaporean shophouses form the backdrop to a night of socialising, underlining their versatility these buildings have embraced in the modern era.