The first location is this scene shot in a large private garden somewhere above Hong Kong island. We don't get to see much of the house itself, sadly, but the view from the garden is impressive and I was scratching my head for a while. I did wonder if it was taken from 53 Stubbs Road at the time but the lack of available photography meant I couldn't say for sure. Luckily, the mapping office now makes its aerial photographs available for online perusal and after looking at some shots from the same year as the film, I can confirm this was indeed 53 Stubbs Road.
The site is now occupied by the Gehry designed Opus building - one of Hong Kong's most exclusive addresses - and it seems that all modern online references to the address concern this new building rather than the older, private house. However, in the design brochure there is a mention (on page 10) that the site had been in the possession of Swire since the 1940s and that the house was used by one of the company's executives.
4 comments:
The Opus website is still online and has a few aerial photos of this old house on the site. I believe the house was the residence of the General Manager of Taikoo Dockyards throughout the 1970s. This house reminds me of Shell's former property on Plantation Road, which you identified.
Rodney
thanks Rodney. Yes, peeps can see the website here: http://www.opushongkong.com/en/Home.php
What did surprise me was the orientation of the building. I always thought the building faced north (i.e. the harbour) but it appears to have been facing east in the aerial snaps. Phil
There are two blocks of Evergreen Villa lower down on Stubbs Road that also have similar orientation.
According to a Swire annual report, this house was 764 square metres on a 3,020 sq. m. site when it was built in 1951. That would have been quite a large house in that era, even for The Peak standards because I think the detached colonial houses nearby were in the range of 400-450 sq. m. Given the larger size of the house itself, maybe this orientation maximized the size of the garden after taking into account the space needed for the long, winding driveway.
Rodney
yeah, the site is huge. I wonder if there was a previous Swire house there before 1951?
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