Tiong Bahru is Singapore's first public housing estate and, improbably, its most fashionable old neighbourhood — a district of low, curved Art Deco apartment blocks from the 1930s that has become the city's centre of cafe culture, independent bookshops, and quiet weekend brunching. Built by the Singapore Improvement Trust in the streamline-moderne style, the walk-up flats with their rounded balconies and spiral staircases were among the first modern homes for ordinary Singaporeans.
The estate is small and walkable, a grid of streets named after Chinese pioneers — Eng Hoon, Seng Poh, Yong Siak. Yong Siak Street is the heart of the new Tiong Bahru, with BooksActually (one of the city's best independent bookshops), bakeries, and design shops occupying the ground floors of the old blocks. The Tiong Bahru Market, a hawker centre at the centre of the estate, is the anchor of the old Tiong Bahru: its second-floor food stalls serve some of the most respected hawker dishes in Singapore, and the wet market below still draws the residents.
The neighbourhood's appeal is its texture — the contrast between the elderly residents who have lived in the SIT flats for decades and the cafes and boutiques that have moved in around them. The Monkey God Temple and the air-raid shelter beneath one of the blocks are reminders of the estate's history. It rewards an unhurried morning: coffee, the market, the bookshops, and the architecture itself.