The charm – and drawbacks – of living in a time warp in Singapore

As spanking new estates spring up on an island criss-crossed by MRT lines, a little corner of Queenstown takes you back to the 1960s.

- Leslie Koh

To be honest, I don't know why I feel so much nostalgia about living in Queenstown. I wasn't born in this estate, nor did I grow up here. Though I visited the area regularly through the late 1970s and early 1980s, when my family went shopping at the Tah Chung Emporium in Commonwealth Avenue or dropped by the old hawker centre in Commonwealth Crescent for cheng tng, Queenstown was not a big part of my childhood.

And yet I feel a great sense of sentimentality living here. Whenever I am asked where I live, I proudly reply: "In one of the oldest HDB estates."

That, incidentally, is not just local pride speaking. Queenstown was built even before Independence, between the late 1950s and mid-1960s, and is Singapore's first satellite town. Named to commemorate the coronation of Queen Elizabeth in 1953, it's a veritable museum of public housing history.

The estate was planned by the Singapore Improvement Trust (SIT), as part of moves to reduce congestion in the city centre amid efforts to tackle the country's housing crunch. The newly formed Housing Board, which took over the SIT's task in 1960, built its first blocks here. Singapore's first flatted factory was also built here, marking the beginnings of the country's industrialisation push.

My particular block of flats is located in Commonwealth estate on the north-western end of Queenstown, which was built between 1962 and 1964. Officially named Neighbourhood III, this corner of Queenstown was—and still is—colloquially known as "Chap Lak Lau", or "16 storeys" in Hokkien, for three blocks perched on a hill that were Singapore's tallest HDB blocks at the time.

Unlike many other old estates in Singapore, Chap Lak Lau has managed to retain much of its past. Most of the HDB blocks built in the 1960s are still around, with some flats even sporting the simple but solid wooden front doors dating back to that era.