Hongkong Hotel
The Hongkong Hotel was Hong Kong's first luxury hotel modelled after sumptuous London hotels. It opened on Queen's Road and Pedder Street in 1868, later expanding into the Victoria Harbour waterfront of Victoria City in 1893.
| Hongkong Hotel 香港大酒店 | |
|---|---|
The Hongkong Hotel on the Central Praya (c.1900); Jardine Matheson opposite (right) | |
| General information | |
| Location | Pedder Street and Queen's Road, Hong Kong |
| Opening | 1868 |
| Closed | 1952 |
| Owner | The Hongkong Hotel Company |
| Technical details | |
| Floor count | 6 |
...the Hong Kong Hotel, constructed after the model of large hotels in London. It has not proved to the shareholders a very profitable undertaking, being on a scale too vast for the requirements of the place. It is rented and conducted by a Chinaman, and none but Chinese cooks and waiters are employed. The management is good and the hotel comfortable. To the visitor, the large dining hall presents an animated and interesting scene, and he finds on further experience that the arrangements are perfect and the fare unexceptionable. The native waiters are remarkable no less for promptitude and politesse than for the spotless purity of their light silk or linen robes, and the fluency of their "pidgin" English in which they converse; this is however a jargon intelligible only to the residents.
—John Thomson (1837–1921), Illustrations of China and Its People, (London,1873-1874) "The Clock Tower, Hong Kong"