SINGAPORE / SHOPPING CULTURE / PENINSULA SHOPPING CENTRE MUSIC HISTORY
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By The Memory desk · Historical reference · Sources checked 7 October 2026
Peninsula Shopping Centre, at 3 Coleman Street near City Hall MRT, is where a great many Singapore guitarists have bought their instruments, strings and pedals. Its basement holds a dense cluster of music shops, anchored by Davis Guitar, which was founded in 1989. The building itself was completed in the early 1970s, on a plot whose recorded history begins in 1829, when George Drumgoole Coleman, Singapore’s first architect, built his own house there.
So the Peninsula Shopping Centre history is really two stories. One is short: a 1970s hotel-and-shopping complex whose basement slowly filled with amplifiers. The other is long: a single address that has been a mansion, four hotels, a squatter settlement and a mall. This guide tells both, keeps what the records say apart from what is merely repeated, and clears up the most common confusion along the way. Peninsula Shopping Centre is not Peninsula Plaza, the “Little Myanmar” mall across the road.
Peninsula Shopping Centre at a glance
| Address | 3 Coleman Street, Singapore 179804, beside the Excelsior Shopping Centre at 5 Coleman Street |
| Name in heritage records | Peninsula Shopping Complex |
| Completed | Early 1970s; the National Library dates the Peninsula Hotel and shopping centre to 1971 |
| Developer | Wing Cheong of Hong Kong, through its subsidiary Peninsula Shopping Complex Realty |
| Known for | Guitars, amplifiers, effects pedals, drums, keyboards and live-sound gear, mostly in the basement |
| Also on site | Sports and camera shops and a food court, according to the National Heritage Board |
Before the mall: Coleman’s house and four hotels
In 1829 George D. Coleman, Singapore’s first architect and an adviser to Stamford Raffles, built himself a two-storey brick house at 3 Coleman Street. It was a landmark on the street that now carries his name. When illness took him away from Singapore, the house began a long second life as a business.
In 1841 it was leased to the Frenchman Gaston Dutronquoy, who ran it as the London Hotel and turned the dining room into a theatre. By 1865 it had become the Hotel de la Paix. In the 1880s the Teochew merchant Tan Yeok Nee occupied it, and it later reopened as the Burlington Hotel, which the National Library records as operating until 1942. After the Second World War the old house was let to shopkeepers, and by the time it was pulled down in 1965 the Library puts its population at around a thousand squatters.
That sequence matters for anyone who walks the street today. Coleman Street was never a quiet residential lane that suddenly acquired a mall. It had been commercial, crowded and reinvented for more than a century before the present building went up.
1965 to the early 1970s: a hotel tower on a shopping podium
The replacement was a product of its moment. Wing Cheong, a Hong Kong company, developed the site through a local subsidiary, Peninsula Shopping Complex Realty, and construction was completed in the early 1970s. The design followed a formula then spreading across central Singapore: a hotel above, shops below, and a basement for whatever tenant would pay for footfall.
That first basement tenant was the Korean Department Store. The National Heritage Board also credits the complex with being the first shopping centre in Singapore to house a 24-hour coffeehouse, a detail that captures the ambition of the time better than any floor plan. For context on how these podium malls spread through the city, see our history of Singapore’s shopping centres, atriums and escalators.
How the basement became a music floor
No public record we could find gives a single date when the guitar shops took over, and it is better to say so than to invent one. What the sources do show is the result. In 2016 Time Out described a basement stocked with Fender, Gibson and Ibanez guitars, pedals, amplifiers, drum kits and synthesisers, and named Davis Guitar at units B1-40 and B1-41 as a mainstay of decades. By 2021 it was counting dozens of instrument stores on the floor.
Davis Guitar was founded in 1989 and is both a retailer and a distributor, carrying brands such as ESP Japan, Takamine and Orange, according to a 2024 guide by Bandwagon. Upstairs, Luther Music at #02-16 sells keyboards, acoustic guitars, electronic drums and recording and live-sound equipment, and installs sound systems for venues. Smaller specialists come and go around them; Time Out singled out Sound Alchemy in 2016 for its Fender Japan stock.
Why did the cluster form here rather than in a newer mall? The following is our reading rather than a documented fact, but it fits how specialist retail behaves elsewhere in Singapore. Instruments are bought by hand and ear: players want to feel a neck, hear a pickup and try a pedal through the amplifier they already own. That rewards a street of competing shops within a few steps of each other, where an afternoon of comparison costs nothing. Older strata malls, with small units sold to individual owners, can house that kind of low-volume, high-knowledge trade more easily than a centrally managed mall chasing turnover. The same logic built the hi-fi floors of the Adelphi a few doors away, and the art-supply and bookshop corridors of Bras Basah Complex.
Repairs and setups keep the relationship going after the sale. A guitar needs new strings, a neck adjustment, a fixed jack or a fresh set of pickups over its life, and a player who trusts one technician tends to return to the same counter. That repeat traffic is something online retailers have never fully replaced, which helps explain why the basement is still full of instruments in an age when strings and cables are a click away.
Peninsula’s reputation for streetwear is the thinnest part of its story in the record. Heritage surveys list music, sports and camera shops and a food court; they do not document a fashion scene, and we have not found reliable sources that date one. Music is the part of the building’s identity that is well attested.
Peninsula, Peninsula Plaza and Excelsior: three buildings, one corner
The names cause endless mix-ups, even in print. Peninsula Shopping Centre is the music mall at 3 Coleman Street. Peninsula Plaza is a separate building on North Bridge Road, completed in 1981 on the site of the old Meyer Mansions, and better known today as the centre of Singapore’s Burmese community; its story is in our history of Peninsula Plaza and Little Myanmar. Next door to Peninsula Shopping Centre stands the Excelsior Hotel and Shopping Centre at 5 Coleman Street, a hotel tower with a five-level shopping podium.
Excelsior shows the pressure that ageing city-centre complexes now face. In February 2023 its owners, with more than 80 per cent of unit owners agreeing, put it up for collective sale with a reserve price of S$458 million, EdgeProp reported. Peninsula Shopping Centre was not part of that sale. Its own units remain individually owned and continue to change hands on the commercial property market.
Visiting Peninsula Shopping Centre today
The mall is a short walk from City Hall MRT station. Opening hours are set shop by shop, so if you are travelling for a particular instrument, call ahead. Bring your own guitar and cable when choosing pedals, so you hear them through the rig you will actually use, and ask whether a setup is included in the price of a new instrument.
Check the warranty before you pay. An instrument bought through the official local distributor is usually backed by that distributor; a parallel import may not be. The same distinction applies to phones and cameras, and our guide to official warranties and parallel imports explains how it works. If something goes wrong after purchase, your consumer rights under the Lemon Law apply to shops here as anywhere else.
A Peninsula Shopping Centre timeline
- 1829: George D. Coleman builds his house at 3 Coleman Street.
- 1841: The house is leased to Gaston Dutronquoy and becomes the London Hotel.
- 1865: It reopens as the Hotel de la Paix.
- 1880s to 1942: Occupied by Tan Yeok Nee, then run as the Burlington Hotel.
- 1965: The old building, by then home to around a thousand squatters, is demolished.
- Early 1970s: The Peninsula complex is completed, with the Korean Department Store in the basement.
- 1989: Davis Guitar is founded; it now trades from basement units B1-40 and B1-41.
- 2021: Time Out counts dozens of instrument stores in the basement.
- 2023: Neighbouring Excelsior is offered for collective sale; Peninsula is not included.
Questions people ask
Where are the guitar shops in Peninsula Shopping Centre?
Mostly in the basement. Davis Guitar is at B1-40 and B1-41, and other instrument and pedal specialists share the same floor. Luther Music, for keyboards, drums and live sound, is on the second floor at #02-16.
Is Peninsula Shopping Centre the same as Peninsula Plaza?
No. Peninsula Shopping Centre is the music mall at 3 Coleman Street. Peninsula Plaza is a separate building on North Bridge Road, completed in 1981 and known as Singapore’s “Little Myanmar”.
When was Peninsula Shopping Centre built?
It was completed in the early 1970s; the National Library dates the Peninsula Hotel and shopping centre to 1971. The previous building on the site was demolished in 1965.
What stood on the site before the mall?
George D. Coleman’s 1829 house, which later served as the London Hotel, the Hotel de la Paix and the Burlington Hotel, and finally housed shopkeepers and squatters before its demolition in 1965.
Who developed Peninsula Shopping Centre?
Wing Cheong of Hong Kong, through its subsidiary Peninsula Shopping Complex Realty, according to the National Heritage Board.
Sources and further reading
- National Heritage Board, Roots: Peninsula Shopping Complex (3 to 5 Coleman Street)
- National Library Board, Infopedia: Coleman Street
- Time Out Singapore: Peninsula Shopping Centre (2016)
- Time Out Singapore: Iconic strata malls in Singapore (2021)
- Bandwagon: A guide to music stores in Singapore (2024)
- EdgeProp: Excelsior Hotel and Shopping Centre up for collective sale (February 2023)
This is a historical reference, not a shop directory: tenants, units and opening hours change, so confirm with a shop before you travel. Read next: Peninsula Plaza and Little Myanmar · The Adelphi and Singapore’s hi-fi shops · Back to The Memory
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