Architecture
The Old Tao Nan School building, built between 1910 and 1912, was designed in the Neo-classical style with features of the French Renaissance. A grand central entrance way leads into an atrium topped with a skylight. Symmetrical staircases on either side of the atrium lead up to galleries and corridors on the second and third levels. To accommodate the tropical climate, large wide verandahs were built at the front of the building; pitched flat interlocking clay roof tiles were used, and high ceilings were erected for better ventilation.
This area, now part of Singapore's commercial centre, was at one time a quiet, peaceful environment and many schools were built there. By today's standards, schools such as the Old Tao Nan School seem somewhat cramped; they certainly lacked the spacious green playgrounds and fields of schools built in the post-war years. Yet architecturally the Old Tao Nan School building evokes the serenity of its era in its arched verandahs, symmetrical arrangement and dignified proportions, fashionable in England in the nineteenth century.
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