Wednesday, June 21, 2017

Das Mädchen von Hongkong - Joachim Fuchsberger (1973) - 68 Deepwater Bay Road, Hong Kong

An easy one to get this one because we are given the address on film several times. The original building was redeveloped in 1978 - a few years after this film was made. The architectural company involved (AKAA) have a project page with a picture of the newer property: http://www.akaa.com.hk/kadoor01.html.

As suggested by the webpage above, the owner is Sir Michael Kadoorie - head of the Hong Kong and Shanghai Hotels Company and China Light & Power etc. Whether or not he owned it in 1972 is uncertain, but I do have a friend who has been lucky enough to visit here and describe the underground garage where Sir Kadoorie stores his collection of cars. Apparently it has a sort of 'rotary' lift whereby he pushes a button and keeps it held until his choice of car pops up. I'm not sure where he keeps his helicopter though...

The house's name is "Miramar" and Gwulo.com has a little bit of information about it here. Kadoorie was so keen to preserve the view from his house that he also bought #70 & 72 to stop anyone else from buying them and redeveloping.

There are a lot of great angles for this location, so this post may be a bit picture-heavy.


The bottom picture shows the view across the pool and over Deep Water Bay towards Middle Island in the distance. The house has been redeveloped,but it looks like the pool and view haven't really changed much.


We also catch a brief glimpse of #71 from the driveway. As far as I can tell that building has also been rebuilt at some point because the current version, despite it's art deco styling, doesn't appear to match the current one.

#71 Deep Water Bay Road

And there is also what appears to be a fake telephone box further down the road (on the lower side of #71).

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Phil, I am slowly finding your posts of these old, demolished mansions. This one is an absolute gem!

The houses at No. 70-72 are now listed as Kadoorie Estates rental properties. There was definitely a monstrous house there on No. 70 or 72 before it was bought by Kadoorie and razed to make room for the development there now. I can't find a picture of it though, but I am absolutely sure it was not a colonial house. Despite being the longer way home and a waste of petrol, I used to drive by this stretch of Deep Water Bay Road just to see these properties and lament why I frittered away all my opportunities to own one.

Rodney

Phil said...

Rodney, to be honest this is one of the reasons I started the blog - so much history captured on film and much of it forgotten. There's afew more houses on here as well but I have about 5 or 6 that I still haven't been able to locate. Phil

Anonymous said...

The house at No. 72 was built/sold in 1994 for $280 million. It was sold again for less than that a few years later. There were two separate houses below No. 68 on old maps, so the monstrous 1990s build at 72 likely was two lots. I can't believe there are no pictures, as it was once the most expensive home ever sold in Hong Kong and/or most expensive in the world up to that point.

Rodney

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