What Was Tanjong Pagar Before Tanjong Pagar? | Coastline, Docks, Rickshaws and the Port District Before the CBD

SINGAPORE / ESTATE HISTORY / TANJONG PAGAR

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By The Memory desk · Historical reference · Sources checked 7 October 2026

Before Tanjong Pagar was a district of restored shophouses at the edge of the CBD, it was Singapore’s docks. The name, Malay for “cape of stakes”, comes from a fishing village on a headland, probably after the wooden stakes of the fish traps in its shallows. In 1848 Captain Henry Keppel surveyed the deep channel beside it, the first dry dock was built there in 1859, and from 1864 the Tanjong Pagar Dock Company turned the coast into the colony’s main wharves.

The Tanjong Pagar history below follows that working coast from the village and nutmeg estates to the dock company, the rickshaw station, the 1932 railway terminus and, from 1972, Southeast Asia’s first container terminal. The shophouse quarter it grew out of is covered in our history of what Chinatown was before Chinatown, and the deep-water coast to the west in what Telok Blangah was before Telok Blangah.

Tanjong Pagar at a glance

Location	South of Chinatown, around Tanjong Pagar Road, Neil Road and Duxton Hill, with the former port land to the south
Name	Malay for “cape of stakes”, usually linked to the stakes of kelong fish traps off the headland
Before the docks	A fishing village and, in the first half of the 19th century, gambier, nutmeg and fruit plantations
Docks	First dry dock 1859; Tanjong Pagar Dock Company formed 1864; Victoria Dock 1868; Albert Dock 1879; taken over by the government in 1905
Landmarks	Jinrikisha Station (1903 or 1904), Tanjong Pagar Railway Station (opened 2 May 1932), conserved shophouses on Neil Road, Tanjong Pagar Road and Duxton Hill
Today	A conserved shophouse district beside office towers; the container terminal closed in 2017 and the railway station in 2011

What does Tanjong Pagar mean?

Tanjong is Malay for a cape or headland, and pagar means a fence or a line of stakes. The National Library explains the name as “cape of stakes” and links it to the kelong, the offshore fish traps built from wooden poles driven into the seabed, which would have lined the shallows off the point. A National Heritage Board collection note records that the fishing village was once called Selintar.

The headland itself has gone. Reclamation for wharves, roads and the railway moved the coast south over more than a century, and the land on which the 1932 railway station was built was itself reclaimed. Like Telok Ayer to the north, Tanjong Pagar is a name that describes a shoreline you can no longer see from the street.

Before the docks: a fishing village and nutmeg estates

In the first decades after 1819 the area south of the Chinese Campong was still largely rural. According to the National Library, settlers in the first half of the 19th century grew gambier, nutmeg and fruit here, and a National Heritage Board record describes European investors laying out nutmeg and fruit plantations in the 1830s.

The village on the cape lived from the sea, and it was not alone on this coast: the National Heritage Board’s story of Keppel Bay records Orang Laut, the sea nomads, living on boats in the waters that became Keppel Harbour. Nothing in the record we found gives a population or a date for the village’s end; it was absorbed as the port grew towards it.

1848 to 1905: New Harbour and the Tanjong Pagar Dock Company

The change came from a survey. In 1848 Captain Henry Keppel of the Royal Navy, sailing in HMS Meander, sounded the deep, sheltered channel between the mainland and Pulau Blakang Mati, now Sentosa. Ships at the old anchorage off the Singapore River had to load and unload by lighter; here they could lie alongside a wharf. The channel became known as New Harbour, and its first wharf opened in 1852.

In 1859 Captain William Cloughton built the first dry dock on the coast, known as No. 1 Dock. Five years later, in 1864, European and Asian investors formed the Tanjong Pagar Dock Company to build a dock of its own, and in 1868 it opened the Victoria Dock. The Suez Canal opened the following year, in 1869, and the steamships it brought east needed coal, repairs and quick turnarounds; the company built the Albert Dock in 1879 and kept buying wharf frontage, so that by 1899 it owned the whole of New Harbour’s waterfront and controlled almost all of Singapore’s shipping business.

The government eventually took the port into its own hands. In 1900 New Harbour was renamed Keppel Harbour in honour of Keppel, who returned to Singapore that year as a 92-year-old admiral. In 1905 the government bought out the Tanjong Pagar Dock Company and ran it as the Tanjong Pagar Dock Board, which became the Singapore Harbour Board on 1 July 1913. One National Library page dates the Harbour Board’s takeover to 1912; we follow the more detailed Infopedia entry.

1892 to 1932: rickshaws, shophouses and the railway terminus

The docks needed thousands of labourers, Chinese and Indian, and the streets behind them filled with shophouses where they lodged and ate. Tanjong Pagar Road was officially opened by the Governor on 2 July 1892, and rows of two- and three-storey shophouses rose along it and up the slopes of Duxton Hill and Neil Road. By 1900, the Urban Redevelopment Authority notes, the old Chinese Campong had expanded to take in Tanjong Pagar.

The district’s other trade was the rickshaw. Pullers carried passengers between the docks, the town and the shophouse streets, and the government set up a Jinrikisha Station at the junction of Neil Road and Tanjong Pagar Road to regulate the trade. The National Library dates the building to 1903, the Chinatown precinct’s heritage page to 1904. It was hard work for little money: in 1924, according to the National Library’s BiblioAsia, a puller earned 20 to 24 Straits dollars a month and spent 12 to 14 of them on living costs.

Rail arrived last. On 2 May 1932 the Federated Malay States Railways opened a new terminus on reclaimed land at Keppel Road, designed largely in the Art Deco style by Swan and Maclaren, with four marble figures by Angiolo Vannetti representing agriculture, commerce, transport and industry. Tanjong Pagar Railway Station linked the wharves to the peninsula and became, for many Singaporeans, the place where journeys north began.

1955 to 2017: from harbour board to container terminal

After the war the district also entered national politics. In 1955 Lee Kuan Yew won the Tanjong Pagar seat, polling the largest number of votes for a single candidate in that election. In 1964 the Singapore Harbour Board was replaced by the Port of Singapore Authority, which set about rebuilding the port for a new kind of cargo.

That cargo was the container. In 1972 the Tanjong Pagar Container Terminal opened with three berths, the first container terminal in Southeast Asia, and on 24 June 1972 it received its first container ship, the M.V. Nihon. Containers needed cranes and stacking yards rather than gangs of men, and the labour that had filled the streets behind the wharves began to disappear.

Why did the dock workers leave? This is our reading rather than a documented fact: once cargo was boxed and handled by machine, the port no longer needed a large workforce living within walking distance. In 2012 the government decided to consolidate Singapore’s container terminals at Tuas, and in August 2017 the Tanjong Pagar terminal ceased operations, with its work moving to the Pasir Panjang terminals.

Conservation and the district today

As the docks emptied, the shophouses behind them were saved. According to the Chinatown precinct’s heritage page, Tanjong Pagar was the first area in Singapore where shophouses were restored under the government’s conservation plan, in the mid-1980s, and on 7 July 1989 it was gazetted as one of Chinatown’s four conservation areas. The former Jing Hwa Cinema, built in the 1950s, was added on 25 November 2005.

The railway station closed on 30 June 2011, when Sultan Ibrahim Ismail of Johor drove the last train out; services moved to Woodlands the next day and the land passed back to Singapore. As of October 2026 the station building stands as a national monument, the Jinrikisha Station still marks the corner of Neil Road, and the shophouse rows of Duxton Hill and Craig Road hold restaurants and offices. For what lay inland, read what Outram was before Outram.

A Tanjong Pagar history timeline

• 1830s: Nutmeg and fruit plantations are laid out in the area.
• 1848: Captain Henry Keppel surveys the deep-water channel later called New Harbour.
• 1859: Captain William Cloughton builds No. 1 Dock, the first dry dock.
• 1864: The Tanjong Pagar Dock Company is formed.
• 1868: The Victoria Dock opens.
• 1879: The Albert Dock is built.
• 2 July 1892: Tanjong Pagar Road is officially opened.
• 1899: The dock company owns the entire New Harbour waterfront.
• 1900: New Harbour is renamed Keppel Harbour.
• 1903 or 1904: The Jinrikisha Station is built at Neil Road.
• 1905: The government buys out the Tanjong Pagar Dock Company.
• 1 July 1913: The Tanjong Pagar Dock Board becomes the Singapore Harbour Board.
• 2 May 1932: Tanjong Pagar Railway Station opens.
• 1955: Lee Kuan Yew wins the Tanjong Pagar seat.
• 1964: The Port of Singapore Authority replaces the Harbour Board.
• 24 June 1972: The Tanjong Pagar Container Terminal receives its first container ship.
• 7 July 1989: Tanjong Pagar is gazetted as a conservation area.
• 30 June 2011: The last train leaves Tanjong Pagar Railway Station.
• August 2017: The Tanjong Pagar container terminal ceases operations.

Questions people ask

What does Tanjong Pagar mean?

It is Malay for “cape of stakes”. The National Library links the name to the wooden stakes of kelong fish traps off the headland where a fishing village once stood.

What was Tanjong Pagar famous for?

Its docks. From 1864 the Tanjong Pagar Dock Company built the wharves and dry docks that made it Singapore’s main port, and the streets behind them housed dock workers and rickshaw pullers.

When did Tanjong Pagar Railway Station close?

On 30 June 2011. The station had opened on 2 May 1932, and after its closure Malaysia’s railway terminus moved to Woodlands.

What is the Jinrikisha Station?

A government building at the corner of Neil Road and Tanjong Pagar Road, set up to regulate the rickshaw trade when Tanjong Pagar was the centre of it. Sources date it to 1903 or 1904.

When did the Tanjong Pagar container terminal open and close?

It opened in 1972, receiving its first container ship on 24 June that year, and ceased operations in August 2017, when its work moved to Pasir Panjang.

Sources and further reading

• National Library Board, Infopedia: Tanjong Pagar
• National Library Board, Memories of Two Cities: Harbour at Tanjong Pagar
• National Library Board, Infopedia: Port of Singapore
• National Heritage Board, Roots: Former Tanjong Pagar Railway Station
• National Heritage Board, Roots: The Story of Keppel Bay
• National Heritage Board, Roots: The Tanjong Pagar Port (collection record)
• Urban Redevelopment Authority: Chinatown – Tanjong Pagar Conservation Area
• Chinatown.sg: Tanjong Pagar / Duxton
• Lim Tin Seng, “Triads, Coolies and Pimps: Chinatown in Former Times”, BiblioAsia (2015)

This is a historical reference; dates follow the sources listed, and where they disagree we say so. Read next: What was Chinatown before Chinatown · Telok Blangah and Keppel Harbour · Back to The Memory