Before the bulldozers: a look back at Hong Kong’s long-lost buildings and what replaced them
A new book, Hong Kong Then and Now, with dozens of rare and unpublished photographs, highlights loss of fine colonial architecture to relentless march of city’s insatiable redevelopment
Many of Hong Kong’s fine old colonial buildings disappeared forever in the 1970s and 80s as developers, keen to build much taller constructions in their place, began bulldozing their way across large parts of the city, including Wan Chai and Central.
What has been lost, and what was built to replace it, is highlighted in a new book, Hong Kong Then and Now, which contains more than 160 rare and previously unpublished photographs and contemporary views taken from the same locations.
The book’s British author and photographer, Vaughan Grylls, who has visited Hong Kong regularly since 1986, spent about six months collecting together the images – “nearly a 1,000 photographs from a variety of sources, including old postcards, photo libraries, old books, photos sent by friends of friends – you name it”, Grylls told the South China Morning Post.
[Hong Kong’s] urban redevelopment came with a vengeance in the 1980s ... almost all of the Western and Chinese urban buildings developed during the Victorian and Edwardian periods were rapidly demolished and replaced by larger and taller buildings of contemporary design
