The Capitol Kempinski Hotel Singapore gives Raffles some serious competition
- The 157 rooms of the heritage split property come in almost 50 configurations
- Choose from colonial art-deco in the Capitol Building or Victoriana in Stamford House
What is this place? An erstwhile (and no doubt for some, current) venue for romantic liaisons, according to the elderly cab driver who picked me up at Changi Airport. In his youth, he’d visited what is now the new Capitol Kempinski Hotel on a couple of blind dates. I swear he blushed.
When you say old buildings, are we talking yesteryear stylish? Absolutely. The Capitol Building is neoclassical, and Stamford House (1904) was built in the Venetian-Renaissance style. Pritzker Prize winner Richard Meier – the designer behind the Getty Center, Los Angeles, and the Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art, Spain – was brought in to manage the restoration and renovation of the complex, which took years.
Sounds like the place has plenty of history. It sure does – and it goes back to the 19th century. Joseph Balestier, the first United States consul to Singapore, arrived in 1836 and lived in a bungalow at the intersection of Stamford and North Bridge roads, close to where the hotel now stands. Balestier started a sugar cane plantation and manufactured rum.
However, his wife, Maria, has an even greater legacy. Her father, Paul Revere, ran the Revere Copper Company in Boston, Massachusetts. In 1843, she donated a large bell made by her dad’s foundry to Singapore on the condition that it be used to sound a curfew for five minutes at 8pm every night.
Where is the bell now? It’s in the National Museum, but the legend lives on in the hotel – every night at 8pm a bell chimes in The Bar at 15 Stamford and staff hand out complementary rum daiquiris. The bar’s signature drink is a Plantation 1840 rum cocktail and 160 labels can be found on its rum list, the largest such collection on the island.