Koon Seng Road

The street is on postcards, campaigns and wedding albums. It is also where people live.

Koon Seng Road is worth twenty minutes, not an afternoon, and only if you look past the colours. Its pastel terrace houses have fronted so many postcards, tourism campaigns and wedding shoots that it is easy to treat the street as a backdrop and forget that people live here. Make it one stop on a longer Joo Chiat wander, go on a weekday morning or late afternoon, and bring a checklist rather than a tripod.

What to look for

The houses mix Peranakan and eclectic Chinese styles with Malay and European touches. Look for the pintu pagar, the half-height swinging doors in front of the main door; the floral tiles, often in majolica style; the five-foot way, the covered walkway along the front; and the brightly painted pillars. Once you start looking, the row stops being a single image and becomes a dozen decisions made by a dozen different owners. The pink house at number 14 stands out between two quieter neighbours.

Why it looks like this

Until 1934 this was plain Lorong E East Coast. It was renamed that year after Cheong Koon Seng, a Straits-born businessman, auctioneer and estate agent, and one of the first 13 pupils at Anglo-Chinese School. Most of the houses went up in the 1920s and 1930s, when Katong and Joo Chiat were where well-to-do families built homes away from the crowded town, and it remained a Peranakan enclave until the 1970s. Triad groups such as Gang 18 and 36th Pai once operated nearby, a chapter the postcards leave out. Conservation status in the early 1990s is the reason the street still looks the way it does.

How to do it well

Go early in the morning or late in the afternoon to spare yourself the worst of the heat, and on a weekday if you would rather not share the pavement with a photo shoot. These are private homes, so manners matter more here than in most places: keep your voice down, stay on the public pavement rather than porches and doorsteps, look out for no-photo signs on gates, and don't stand in the road for a shot. The pleasure is in noticing, not in being noticed.

From Marine Parade MRT it is about a 10-minute walk via Joo Chiat Road, which is also where to find coffee or lunch afterwards. If the doors and tiles have you hooked, the Peranakan Museum is the logical next stop, on another day.

Good to know Koon Seng Road is in Joo Chiat, about a 10-minute walk from Marine Parade MRT via Joo Chiat Road. It is a residential street with no opening hours; visit quietly, photograph from the public pavement and respect any no-photo signs.

Want more places to slow down and look closely? Here are our favourite outdoor outings.

Koon Seng Road | Joo Chiat | Nearest MRT: Marine Parade