The First Generation Building
Beaconsfield House site was originally home to the Beaconsfield Arcade (so named for Benjamin Disraeli, Lord Beaconsfield), built in 1878 by then Hong Kong Bank director, Calcutta-born Sephardi Jew Emanuel R Belilios and sold controversially to the government in 1898 (the Legco Public Works Committee resolution passing on Mr Belilios' own vote over a suppressed protest for pecuniary interest disqualification), and across the street from Hong Kong Bank itself and City Hall. Dent's Fountain was later added and donated by Dent & Co..
Beaconsfield was also named for a government building near Government Hill built in the late 19th Century. It was demolished to make way for the French Mission Building of 1917 (at one time also owned by Mr Belilios).
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Famous quotes containing the words the first, generation and/or building:
“The first of the undecoded messages read: “Popeye sits in thunder,
Unthought of. From that shoebox of an apartment,
From livid curtain’s hue, a tangram emerges: a country.””
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“A generation which has passed through the shop has absorbed standards and ambitions which are not of those of spaciousness, and cannot get away from them. Everything with them is done as though for sale, and they naturally have in view the greatest possible benefit, profit and that end of the stuff that will make the best show.”
—Alexander Herzen (1812–1870)
“I am not building here a statue to erect at the town crossroads, or in a church or a public square.... This is for a nook in a library, and to amuse a neighbor, a relative, a friend, who may take pleasure in associating and conversing with me.”
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)