Eng Aun Tong Building
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Eng Aun Tong Building, also known as Tiger Balm Medical Hall, is a historic building at the corner of Neil Road and Craig Road in Tanjong Pagar, Singapore. Completed in the 1920s, it served as the Tiger Balm factory for several decades.
The building was designed in the Neoclassical style, featuring cornices, arches, columns and a hexagonal pavilion on the roof, which may be a reference to the Tiger Balm bottle. It previously featured a model of a tiger on its front.[1] The building is among the few pre-World War II structures in Singapore to feature a flat roof.[2]
The building was opened as the Tiger Balm factory in 1926 by brothers Aw Boon Haw and Aw Boon Par.[3] Aw Boon Haw soon filed a lawsuit against a medical hall of the same name which had been established earlier at nearby 132-134 Tanjong Pagar Road, demanding that the older business change its name. He lost the charge, and both businesses "went on to co-exist peacefully for years".[4] The building continued to serve as the Tiger Balm factory for around 50 years.[1] On 10 August 1961, a fire resulted in the building resilted in the destruction of $3,000 worth of Chinese medicinal products.[5]
The building was purchased by garment maker Singapore Crocodile in 1973.[6] In 1995, the company leased it to the newly-established French Business Centre, which aimed to support French Small and medium-sized enterprises who were looking to set up in Singapore, until 2000.[4][7] In July 1997, Singapore Crocodile put the property up for sale with an asking price of $22 million.[6] However, the company withdrew the sale as a result of the "depressed property market".[8] In 2007, PayPal moved into the building.[9] In this period, the building also housed eBay and Skype.[10] On 4 December 2019, American fast casual chain Shake Shack announced that it would be opening its second Singaporean outlet in the building.[11] The outlet opened on 7 February 2020, occupying the building's ground floor.[12]
Wikiwand in your browser!
Seamless Wikipedia browsing. On steroids.
Every time you click a link to Wikipedia, Wiktionary or Wikiquote in your browser's search results, it will show the modern Wikiwand interface.
Wikiwand extension is a five stars, simple, with minimum permission required to keep your browsing private, safe and transparent.
