About 18 Carpenter Street

18 Carpenter Street is a small strata-titled shophouse building at Singapore 059907, in postal District 1. Carpenter Street is a narrow street linking South Bridge Road and New Bridge Road, one block back from Boat Quay. Very little has been published about No. 18 itself, so this page draws on the recorded history of the street and its conservation area.

The street forms part of the Upper Circular Road Conservation Area. It was historically a working street of shophouses serving the river trade. Today the buildings hold offices, cafes, restaurants, studios and boutique accommodation.

Interesting facts

URA notes that the conservation area is made up mainly of three to five storey buildings put up between the 1930s and the late 1960s. It values them as a record of how ideas of Modern architecture changed from one generation to the next.
A list of local street names printed in 1891 gives two Hokkien names for Carpenter Street. One means wayang-house street, after a theatre. The other is translated as the street of the Ghi Hoks, a Chinese society of the period.
The National Library Board's PictureSG collection holds archive photographs of the exterior of No. 18 Carpenter Street and of the view along the street towards South Bridge Road.
The area is treated as a Secondary Settlement under URA's conservation guidelines. This keeps the street frontages while allowing more flexibility at the rear than in the core historic districts.

Nearby

Clarke Quay MRT (North East Line) is roughly 5 minutes' walk. Raffles Place MRT (East West and North South Lines) and Chinatown MRT (North East and Downtown Lines) are about 8 to 10 minutes away. Elgin Bridge, Boat Quay and the Singapore River are one block north. Hong Lim Park, with Speakers' Corner, and Hong Lim Market and Food Centre lie to the south.

Key facts

Address: 18 Carpenter Street, Singapore 059907
District: 1
Property type: Shophouse (Upper Circular Road Conservation Area)
Nearest MRT: Clarke Quay (NEL)
MCST: 2264