The Kowloon peninsula had only recently been ceded to the British crown when, in 1860, the British military laid claim to a bluff overlooking the harbour and the burgeoning neighbourhood of Tsim Sha Tsui. The first permanent installation came around 1880, when the Kowloon Battery was erected, part of a series of coastal defence installations meant to ward off maritime threats from the French and the Russians – two other European powers with their eyes on the Far East.
Construction of the battery was followed by that of the Whitfield Barracks in the 1890s. Named after Henry Wase Whitfield, commander of British troops in China, Hong Kong and the Straits Settlements, the barracks were home to Hong Kong’s Indian garrisons. The troops were housed in 25 whitewashed blocks with arched verandas and Chinese-style tiled roofs.
Many were Muslim, so a mosque was built at the northeastern corner of the barracks, where the Tsim Sha Tsui Police Station stands today. That earned the barracks the nickname of Lo Shan or Mosque Hill. Whereas the barracks blocks were the epitome of Sino-British colonial architecture, the onion-domed mosque would not have been out of place in Bombay.
Life in the barracks was either uneventful or not well recorded – there are few indications of anything notable happening there during most of its existence. Ng Kong, the former chairman of the Yau Ma Tei Kaifong Association, recalled in 2011 how he worked at the barracks during the Japanese occupation, reporting for roll-call every morning for his job as a photographer, which was paid in rice.
“It was such a big relief that I did not have to beg for rice during the occupation,” he said. But he wasn't spared all the atrocities of the war. “People died either from hunger or beatings [by the Japanese]. I remember rubbish bins filled with human heads.”
Hong Kong boomed after the war and, in 1962, Britain’s War Department agreed to surrender the Whitfield Barracks to the government, in exchange for land in Kowloon Tong and San Po Kong. At the time, the barracks were home to Hong Kong’s first Gurkha Brigade, which arrived in 1948.
Many of the Gurkhas were transferred to the nearby Gun Club Hill Barracks and, over the years, they put down roots in the surrounding neighbourhood, as reflected today in Yau Ma Tei’s large and growing Nepalese population.
The government planned a park from the very beginning. “All existing trees would be retained as far as possible,” reported the Post in 1967, and several of the old barracks blocks would be preserved for park use. But the initial plans only covered the southern half of the barracks; the northern half was zoned for commercial and residential development.
Community groups pushed for a library, school and other civic facilities to be included in any future development, but at the same time, a private developer was pushing to built an expansive new convention centre on the land.
Meanwhile, a controversy was brewing over the future park’s name even as the old barracks were being demolished. A variety of community groups urged the government to name the park after Sun Yat-sen, the father of the Republic of China, but the government refused, choosing the more anodyne name of Kowloon Park instead. It never explained its decision, much to the consternation of the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Association of Hong Kong, which claimed that “almost every Chinese resident of the colony was in favour of the name”.
The park officially opened on June 24, 1970, with a lion dance and a speech by Governor David Trench, who described it as “perhaps the closest approach we have in Hong Kong to a traditional landscaped English park”. But only a fraction of the park was actually accessible to the public. There was a small rose garden and a historic barracks building that was repurposed as a museum and reading room.
Construction on the rest of the green space was hampered by a lack of funding, and it was still dragging on in 1978, when the Post reported that “the most ambitious parts of the park project still remain unfinished; in many cases work has not even started.”
To make matters worse, the government was already planning to sell off a portion of the park to be developed into a shopping centre. Described as “the last piece of virgin land” on Nathan Road’s Golden Mile, the property was turned into the Park Lane Shoppers’ Boulevard. Designed by a young architect named Rocco Yim, the commercial complex included a ceremonial gate to Kowloon Park, as well as a green roof that projected out above the shops along Nathan Road.
Yim went on to become one of Hong Kong’s most established architects, and designed the new government headquarters at Tamar and the upcoming Palace Museum in West Kowloon.
As Park Lane was being built, so was a new mosque, as the original one had been damaged by construction of the Mass Transit Railway (now the MTR) in the 1970s. The new Kowloon Masjid and Islamic Centre opened in 1984 at the southeastern corner of Kowloon Park, and quickly became an anchor for the city’s Muslim population.
Work on Kowloon Park was finally completed in 1989, more than two decades after it began, thanks to a HK$300 million donation from the Jockey Club, which also provided soil excavated from the recently redeveloped Happy Valley racetrack. The north side of the park was spared residential and commercial development and instead became home to a swimming pool and athletic facility designed by British architect Derek Walker, who was inspired by the Crystal Palace built in London’s Hyde Park for the Great Exhibition of 1851.
When architect Sarah Lee and her partner Yano Yutaka co-curated the 2015 Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism\Architecture in Kowloon Park, they were surprised by how intensively the park is used. “It gave the impression that it is closely integrated with surrounding urban fabric and local community,” she says. “Tai chi in the morning, workers at lunchtime, tourists in the afternoon, and local people pass by in the evening again.”
At weekends, domestic helpers flock to the park to have picnics and dance parties powered by portable speakers.
Even with so many attractions and no shortage of visitors, the park is a surprisingly underrated destination, little heralded by guidebooks despite its central location.
Among the park’s more overlooked features is the Heritage Discovery Centre, which is housed inside a thoughtfully restored barracks block that hosts exhibitions on heritage and architecture. There’s also a reference library that is a treasure trove for anyone interested in history, archaeology, conservation and museology.
Some of Hong Kong’s oldest trees can be found in Kowloon Park, including a massive 400-year-old banyan. The camphor trees that line the southern edge of the park, overlooking Haiphong Road, were part of the colonial government’s effort to plant street trees throughout Hong Kong in the late 19th century. Most of those trees have long since been chopped down, but those in Kowloon Park remain as robust as ever.
On the other side of the park is a totem pole carved by the indigenous Tlingit people of British Columbia in Canada. Behind that is an even more obscure attraction: the site of the old Kowloon Battery, whose cannons now face the shopping malls of Canton Road instead of the open water of Victoria Harbour.
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