From plantation to retail, entertainment hub

ORCHARD Road has supposedly got its name from the nutmeg, pepper and fruit orchards that used to lie on either side of the street in the 1840s.

In the 1900s, a mysterious disease has swept through the nutmeg plantations, wiping them out within a year. Due to its location in a valley, floods were also common. They were only controlled in 1965 when Stamford Canal — part of which runs below the pedestrian mall fronting Wisma Atria Shopping Centre today — was deepened and widened.

In the 1970s, pioneering landmarks like C. K. Tangs, Plaza Singapura and the Mandarin Hotel came up and led the way for entertainment complexes. Brick by brick, and block by block, towers of glass and steel lined what used to be mud-tracks to make Orchard Road the premier shopping belt today.

Orchard Road is a road in Singapore that is the retail and entertainment hub of the city-state. It is regularly frequented by the local population as well as being a major tourist attraction. Often the surrounding area is known simply as Orchard.

The immediate vicinity of Orchard Road, Orchard Planning Area is one of 55 urban planning areas as specified by the Urban Redevelopment Authority, and is a commercial district.

It is part of the Central Region, and Singapore's central business district, the Central Area.

During the National Day Rally Speech 2005, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong had said that he would create more landmark buildings to create more fun in the district, partly to keep up with the vibrant cities around the region.

Orchard Road has recently underwent a S$40 million revamp, with the addition of new street lamps, planter boxes, urban green rooms, street tiling, and flower totem poles, excluding three new malls under construction as of April 2009

The road is a one-way street. It starts at the intersection with Orange Grove Road which is the location of the Orchard Hotel, then stretches southeast across the Scotts Road/Paterson Hill intersection, Orchard MRT Station, Bideford Road, Somerset MRT Station, Central Expressway, Dhoby Ghaut MRT Station, and ends at the intersection with Handy Road (just before Prinsep Street), where it becomes Bras Basah Road.

It has an extensive underground infrastructure, including underground pedestrian walkways between the malls running underneath the street and also other streets in the vicinity. The numbers actually begin at Handy Road and end at Orange Grove Road.

History: Commercial development only began in the twentieth century, and took off in the 1970s.

Orchard Road was already cut in the 1830s, though the new road was not named in George Coleman's 1836 Map of Singapore. In the 1830s the Orchard Road area was the scene of gambier and pepper plantations. Later, nutmeg plantations and fruit orchards predominated, hence its name.

By 1846, the spread of houses had reached up to Tank Road. There were none on the left side and only three or four houses went past Tank Road on the right side of Orchard Road. One major sight during this period was a Mr Orchard tending his garden, which helped endorse the road's name. He had a garden and plantation at the corner of what is now Scotts Road and Orchard Road.

Towards the later part of the 1840s, graveyards began to appear along the road. By 1846, the Chinese had a large graveyard around what is now the Meritus Mandarin Hotel and Ngee Ann City, while the Sumatrans from Bencoolen had their burial ground where the current Grand Central Hotel stands. Later a Jewish cemetery was established; it was located where Dhoby Ghaut MRT Station is now situated, and demolished in 1984.

In the 1860s, Orchard Road had a great number of private houses and bungalows on hills looking down through the valley where the road passed through. Early in the 1890s, His Majesty Somdetch Phra Paramindr Maha Chulalongkorn, the supreme King of Siam, acquired 'Hurricane House' in the vicinity of Orchard Road through Tan Kim Ching, the Thai Consul in Singapore. Two other of adjoining properties were added later and these subsequently became the site of the present Royal Thai Embassy at 370 Orchard Road.

In the early 20th century, it was noted that Orchard Road "present[ed] the appearance of a well-shaded avenue to English mansion[s]", comparable in its "quiet but effective beauty to Devonshire lanes." The Chinese called the area tang leng pa sat koi or 'Tanglin market street'. The Tamils refer to the road as vaira kimadam or 'fakir's place', and muttu than (high ground), a reference t the hilly nature of the area.

Landmarks: Perhaps the most elegant building on Orchard Road is the Istana, at its southern end. Nibong palms survive near its entrance, with a plaque that reads: "As the nibong is a mangrove palm, this site must have once been a mangrove swamp". If this information is accurate, then Orchard Road was once a muddy swamp and these palms are remnants of that original habitat.

On the northern side of Orchard Road is the Botanic Gardens. Along Scotts Road is Goodwood Park Hotel, a fine example of colonial architecture and a monument. At the junction of Scotts Road and Orchard Road is TANGS, the first upmarket department store in Singapore.

About halfway down Orchard Road are Cairnhill and Emerald Hill, where the rich Chinese built their residences, now prime properties sought after by affluent professionals and expatriates. Next to Emerald Hill is Centrepoint, which houses the supermarket Cold Storage, possibly the oldest surviving business establishment in the area. Other establishments have not been so fortunate. Amber Mansions, one of the earliest apartment blocks in Singapore, built around the turn of the 20th century, was torn down in the 1980s to make way for the Dhoby Ghaut MRT Station. Orchard Road intersection with Orchard Link. Occupying the site of the former Pavilion Cinema, Specialists' Shopping Centre was one of the earliest redevelopment projects on Orchard Road. The shopping centre had been demolished to make way for a new development, Orchard Central. Its flagship store was John Little, which has been trading in Singapore since the mid 19th century, when it opened its first outlet in Commercial Square (now Raffles Place). The first shop on Orchard Road was TANGS founded in 1934 and established on Orchard Road in the 1950s. visitsingapore.com and en.wikipedia.org