Kings Road Then & Now

King’s Road in Hong Kong is the major street that runs east-west along the northern shore of Hong Kong Island, extending all the way from Causeway Bay to Sai Wan Ho. If you visit HK you’ll likely end up travelling along the street at some point, whether it be by foot, bus or tram above ground or MTR underground.

Old Hong Kong Tram

Earlier in the year, I came across a treasure trove of historical photos on a local forum showing the area around North Point (北角) and Quarry Bay (鰂魚涌) mostly from the 1970s and ’80s.

Kings Road near Taikoo in 1978
Kings Road near Taikoo in 1978

As I browsed through the collection I noticed that some looked familiar and it turns out this was because they were taken along the stretch of Kings Road where I was living at the time.

Me being me I decided to go out and take some comparison shots which you can see above. Although a few of the older buildings have been rebuilt and there’s now the MTR station amazingly it hasn’t changed as much as I expected!

Above is a video that I shot in 2011 of the tram ride all the way along King’s Road.

David avatar

One response

  1. It was lovely to come across your blog and I especially enjoyed reading about Quarry Bay, then & now. I used to go to Quarry Bay School (QBS) back in the early 50s 🙂

    I also enjoyed this page about King’s Road. Obviously I had to travel the length of King’s Road to get to QBS and in those days, it was a very quiet road! I went to the forum you mentioned and was so happy to see a photo of King’s Road with Queen’s Cafe there. My parents used to go there a lot, especially during (Russian) Easter as Mischa, the head honcho there, was a very jolly Chinese man who spoke good Russian. My mother would order kulich from him and there were other goodies; and since my folks used to have a big open house every January 1, they had Mischa to cater all the Russian dishes. So delicious!

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