Colonial-era Murray House’s resurrection in Hong Kong 20 years on: heritage expert still sceptical, Stanley villagers happy it draws visitors
- Twenty years ago Murray House – built in 1840s Central as a British officers’ garrison, then dismantled – was, like a giant 3D jigsaw, reassembled in Stanley
- Villagers worried about feng shui and its spooky reputation from wartime use as a Japanese torture centre, but value its appeal to tourists, who spend locally
Murray House – in the affluent Hong Kong seaside town of Stanley – is a remarkable building and the tale of two civic projects.
For some, its demolition and subsequent resurrection make it the jewel in the crown of the former British colony’s heritage. To others, it has become little more than a travesty.
Unlike many other architectural treasures that have ended up as landfill, Murray House – a 19th century building dismantled piece by piece and placed in storage in the 1980s – was found a new role as seaside hang-out.
Its resurrection 20 years ago was the culmination of a drawn-out process, and generated a chorus of protest from heritage purists.
Rewind to 1982, when the building was in the middle of the rapidly expanding Central district, a mundane – albeit architecturally distinctive – government office building that could function practically anywhere and didn’t need to occupy a prime commercial site. The Bank of China was in need of a plot of land for its new headquarters, a tower later designed by renowned architect I.M. Pei.
The Murray House site was sold for HK$120 million – widely regarded as a sugar-coated sweetheart deal – and the historic building was taken to pieces stone by stone, tile by tile and column by column, each numbered and placed in storage. Several years rolled by and discussions dragged on until 1988, when the Housing Authority, then undertaking a major building project at Ma Hang in Stanley, suggested resurrecting Murray House on the waterfront there as a dining and entertainment venue.