Shanghai Street - History

History

Coordinates: 22°18′23″N 114°10′11″E / 22.30647°N 114.16959°E / 22.30647; 114.16959

Before 1874, the location in Shanghai Street was actually a sea with ships parked there every day. Therefore, the ground of Shanghai Street that people have been stepping on for more than a century and 2 decades is an early-reclaimed land in Hong Kong.

The street is not named because there are lots of Shanghai people there. In fact, Shanghai Street has long been an ordinary Cantonese district without many Shanghai people. So what makes Shanghai Street called Shanghai? Actually, Shanghai Street was having a name of Station Street (差館街) before being given the name of Shanghai Street. The reason was that there was the Yau Ma Tei Police Station, a police station located at the junction of Public Square Street and Shanghai Street until its relocation at No. 627 Canton Road in 1922. Since the police station was the great symbol of the area there, the street was originally called Station Street. It was divided into two sections, Station Street South and Station Street North, on 12 November 1898.

There are two reasons that the street changed name. First, in 1909, the Government started to name streets in Kowloon after major Chinese provinces that traded with Hong Kong to recognize Hong Kong as a commercial port. The British colonial government in Hong Kong found the area of Station Street was as prosperous as Shanghai in China at that time while Hong Kong was having trade relation with Shanghai. Therefore, they changed the Station street into Shanghai Street on 19 March 1909. The second reason is that there was a street called Upper Station Street (差館上街) in Sheung Wan, a place in Hong Kong Island and it caused confusion with the one in Yau Ma Tei and Mong Kok.

One of the then two Magistrate's Courts of Kowloon was located in Shanghai Street between Public Square Street and Market Street, until it was demolished in 1957. The other one was the Kowloon Magistracy in Gascoigne Road, built in 1936 and renamed the South Kowloon District Court in 1957. The North Kowloon Magistracy, built in 1960 in Shek Kip Mei, later shared the workload.

Before the 1970s when Nathan Road became prosperous, Shanghai Street was the leading business corridor in Hong Kong. Indeed in mid 19th century Station Street (the previous name of Shanghai Street) has started to prosper. In the tax record book of 1880, there were 150 taxed units, including a brothel, the most number of units at that time, under the title Station Street. There were about 9,000 people living in Yau Ma Tei at that time. The district was already the most populated district. Adding with over a hundred shops, the district became the most prosperous area from late 19th century to mid 20th century. The shops there were related to traditional Chinese trades and livelihood, including shops selling traditional wedding dresses, fung shui tools, pawnshops and books. In between 1970s to 1990s, the Mong Kok area of Shanghai Street was symbolized by a wide variety of night clubs and sexual agencies. All these are mixed together with the shops and residential areas there. Indeed, all these business are still in activation nowadays without fading away by time.