Patrick Comerford
In recent years, I have been exploring how three prominent Irish figures shaped the streets and vistas of Singapore in the 19th century: Sir Orfeur Cavenagh (1820-1891), the Governor with family roots in Co Wexford; George Drumgoole Coleman (1795-1844), the architect who was born in Drogheda; and William Cuppage (1807-1871), with family roots in Coleraine and Coolock, who first began to develop Emerald Hill, an architectural heritage area off Orchard Road, almost 200 years ago.
Denis Santry (1879-1960) was both an architect and cartoonist. As a cartoonist, he was a pioneer of animated cartoons in South Africa; as an architect, he designed several prominent structures in Singapore and Kuching, including the Sultan Mosque and the Cenotaph in Singapore and the General Post Office and the Brooke Obelisk in Kuching.
Santry was born in Cork on 14 May 1879, the son of Denis Santry, a carpenter and joiner, and Mary Ellen (Foley). After an apprenticeship as a cabinetmaker, he studied at the Cork Municipal School of Art from (1894-1896) and the Crawford School of Art (1895). He was articled to the architect James Finbarre McMullen in 1897, and with a Lane scholarship studied at the Royal College of Art, London (1897-1898). There he won the Queen’s Prize for freehand drawing before returning to work with McMullen.
Santry moved to South Africa in 1901 and worked in Cape Town with the architects Tully and Waters and William Patrick Henry Black. He married Madeline Marian Hegarty, also from Cork, in 1904.
Santry also became a cartoonist with the South African Review, the Sunday Times and the Rand Daily Mail, and was a pioneer of animated cartoons in South Africa. His cartoons were reproduced in several countries during World War I.
After World War I, Santry moved to Singapore in 1918, and became a partner in the architectural firm Swan and Maclaren. There he designed several prominent buildings and monuments, including the Sultan Mosque, the Cenotaph, the Maritime Building, built as the Union Building, the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank Building and the Telok Ayer Chinese Methodist Church.
Santry’s principal work in Kuching is the General Post Office (1931), with its neoclassical façade and the Brooke coat-of-arms crowning the pediment. The GPO was commissioned by Charles Vyner Brooke (1874-1963), the third and last Rajah of Sarawak.
In Kuching, Santry also designed the Brooke Obelisk in front of the Old Court House. It was unveiled 100 years ago on 13 October 1924 by Charles Vyner Brooke in memory of his father, Charles Brooke, who ruled as the second Rajah from 1868 to 1917.
Denis Santry was the first president of the Saint Patrick’s Society Singapore, which held its first meeting in the Victoria Memorial Hall in 1925.
He was a member of the board of the Victoria Theatre and Concert Hall, a frequent contributor to the Straits Produce, a satirical magazine, and helped to found the Singapore Society of Architects and the Institute of Architects of Malaya.
Santry retired to England in 1934 and lived in Kent. But he returned to South Africa in 1940 and died in Durban on 14 April 1960.
The Swan and Maclaren Group, where Santry was a partner, is one of the oldest architectural firms in Singapore. It was one of the most prominent architectural firms in Singapore when it was a crown colony in the early 20th century, and the practice has designed numerous heritage buildings in Singapore and Malaysia.
The company began in Singapore as Swan and Lermit in 1887, when it was formed by two surveyor engineers, Archibald Alexander Swan (1857-1911) and Alfred Lermit (1850-1921). Lermit left the partnership in 1890, and it became Swan and Maclaren after James Waddell Boyd Maclaren (1863-1910) joined as a partner in 1892.
Regent Alfred John Bidwell (1869-1918) joined the firm in 1897, when he arrived in Singapore after working for a few years in Kuala Lumpur. He was the first professionally trained architect in Singapore since George Drumgoole Coleman practised there in the 1820s and 1830s.
Bidwell dominated the work of Swan and Maclaren from 1897 to 1911, and his talent and reputation made it the dominant architectural practice in colonial Singapore, with the most prestigious commissions. Many of those buildings are still standing and some have been gazetted as national monuments, including Raffles Hotel (1899), the Teutonia Club (1900, now Goodwood Park Hotel) and the Victoria Memorial Hall (1905), now the Victoria Theatre and Concert Hall.
The Raffles Hotel was one of the first of numerous projects by Bidwell with Swan and Maclaren. The practice rebuilt the Teutonia Club in 1900 in a new location on Scotts Road after it moved from its location near Raffles Hotel on North Bridge Road. Bidwell applied the south German architectural style in his design of the clubhouse.
In his design of the Victoria Memorial Hall, Bidwell duplicated the adjacent original Town Hall that later became the Victoria Theatre, and he also designed the clock tower joining the two buildings.
Bidwell also designed the three-storey Stamford House, formerly the Oranje Building, completed in 1904. By then, Swan and Maclaren was the largest architectural practice in Singapore. The firm worked on the extensions and rebuilding of the Victoria Memorial Hall in 1905, and the Chesed-El Synagogue on Oxley Rise was built that same year.
The Singapore Cricket Club was extended and refurbished in 1907, and the Eastern Extension, later Telegraph House and today Sofitel So Singapore, was built at 35 Robinson Road.
The firm designed and built one of the largest shops in early Singapore, John Little on Raffles Place, across the square from Robinson and Co, in 1907. Swan and Maclaren rebuilt Saint Joseph’s Church on Victoria Street in the Gothic style in 1906-1912.
Eu Yan Sang at 267 to 271 South Bridge Road, built in 1910, was the first Eu Yan Sang outlet in Singapore set up by the Chinese businessman and philanthropist Eu Tong Sen. The building was designed by Bidwell, and Swan and Maclaren also designed the Eu Villa, a large villa for Eu Tong Sen on Mount Sophia in 1913, built at a cost of $1 million.
Swan and Maclaren also designed the Jinrikisha Station on Neil Road in 1913 and rebuilt part of the Sri Mariamman Temple on South Bridge Road in 1916.
Meanwhile, Bidwell left Swan and Maclaren in 1915 to establish his own practice. By then, he was the most important architect in Singapore. He died on 6 April 1918, Denis Santry moved to Singapore that same year and became a partner in Swan and Maclaren.
After World War II Denis Santry designed the Cenotaph for Swan and Maclaren in 1922. The granite memorial at the Esplanade Park commemorates the soldiers who died in World War I. Its reverse side was inscribed with the names of soldiers who died in World War II.
Between World War I and World War II, the firm’s projects included the Sultan Mosque (1924-1928), Ocean Building (1923), Hongkong Bank Chambers (now HSBC Building) (1925), Prinsep Street Presbyterian Church (1930) and the Singapore Turf Club (1934). Denis Santry was the principal architect on many of these projects.
The former Great Southern Hotel at 70 Eu Tong Sen Street was designed by Swan and Maclaren and was known as the Raffles Hotel of Chinatown. It was popular with celebrities from Hong Kong and China, was the first Chinese hotel in Singapore to boast a lift service.
The Majestic Theatre at 80 Eu Tong Sen Street was originally a Cantonese opera house designed by Swan and Maclaren by Eu Tong Sen in 1927 for his wife after she was reportedly refused admittance to an opera performance elsewhere. A highlight of this art deco building is its decorated façade of hand-painted tiles depicting opera characters and flying dragons.
Swan and Maclaren completed the construction of the ‘Eastern Extension’ at 35 Robinson Road, later known as Telegraph House, in 1927. Today, it is the Sofitel So Singapore. Swan and Maclaren also rebuilt part of the Sri Mariamman Temple on South Bridge Road in 1916.
Swan and Maclaren remained an important practice after World War II, continuing with projects such as Singapore Polytechnic’s original campus at Prince Edward Road, and Saint Thomas’s Anglican Cathedral in Kuching. However, it lost some of its dominance with increased competition from both local and foreign companies.
Swan and Maclaren is among the oldest extant architectural practices in the world. The founders of the practice, Swan and Maclaren, are both buried in their native Scotland. Today, the Swan and Maclaren Group has its headquarters in UE Square, Singapore, and the firm continues to design numerous projects in Singapore.
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