With the recent news that Dakota Crescent will be demolished to make way for a new apartment complex, the final death bell tolled for the erstwhile Instgram-friendly low-rise 1950s apartment blocks.
Long been a weird little side-trip to experience what it might have been like to live in a 1950s style housing development, the government will chuck everyone out on their collective ear whenever they feel like it – there is no solid demolishing date set yet. Some buildings will be saved for prosperity (or for dead body storage) and the iconic dove playground will also be saved. In some form or another.
I trundled along a while ago to photograph some slices of life that I could capture. I will photo-essay the rest of the way. Enjoy.
Some apartments were already abandoned and empty. They were small and the overabundant concrete walls and fittings gave the apartments a cold and threadbare air.
Like other public housing around Singapore there are plenty of nice angles cutting through the Singaporean sky. You just have to look up.
They took their safety very seriously. The metal security doors wouldn’t look out of place on Alcatraz.
The cream coloured walls dissect the small green spaces around Dakota Crescent.
There are a number of different sign posts clamped on to the buildings around Dakota Crescent. I’m sure they might start disappearing soon by some opportunistic cultural-historical vultures.
The brickwork shows signs of aging in parts.
I didn’t. Might need to put a high security metal door around your potted fruit. I like the use of verb “pluck” here; very unexpected.
There was an air of quiet resignation around Dakota Crescent – like the atmosphere that Rochor Centre had in the run up to its end of days.
The famous pigeon playground will “stay” so “they” say. Perhaps it will be preserved in amber or something.
The playground is used mostly by mosquitoes now.
One of the cool things about Dakota Crescent is the contrast between the different wall textures. Here you get a trifecta or fourfecta if you’re being really precise.
Dakota Crescent will be missed. Therein lies the price of progress I mutter as I stretch back in my modern condo built on top of the bones of 1950’s Singapore.