102-Year-Old Raffles Hotel Gets Spruced Up : Singapore Plans to Preserve Institution

SINGAPORE —  It’s the kind of place Englishmen left to join mad dogs in the noonday sun or perhaps strike out on the road to Mandalay. The more sensible sat around sipping Singapore Slings.

It’s Raffles Hotel, which has survived for 102 years--ceiling fans still whirring, grillwork elevator clanking up and down, dark paneling and long corridors with creaking floors, wide verandas and elderly waiters shuffling around the Palm Court garden.

Dear as it was to the hearts of many, Raffles in recent times has become a bit seedy, and the talk was that it would come down because the land on which it sits is extremely valuable. One plan for renovation was scrapped in 1983 because tourism had slumped and thousands of rooms in Singapore’s more modern hotels stood empty.

But another chance has come for the legendary Raffles, with the announcement by its owners that it will be restored to some semblance of its old self in a 2-year, $27.3-million face lift.

A tourist industry study two years ago had suggested that the “national asset” might make it if turned into a suites-only establishment for state guests and VIPs.

The 127-room hotel will remain open during the renovation, which will be done in phases, according to the bankers that now own it.

The central block will remain but the old ballroom and courtyard wing are to be demolished to make way for a basement parking garage, function rooms and a bedroom wing.

Raffles is in many respects the antithesis of a standard modern hotel, with its French Renaissance architecture and palm trees all around.

The atmosphere is still tropically relaxed, but with a residual whiff of stiff-upper-lip British colonial.

Raffles dates to the early 1800s, when it was founded as a “tiffin house,” or lunchroom in a private home. The actual hotel in Beach Road was started in 1886 by three Armenian brothers and named for the founder of Singapore, Sir Stamford Raffles.

By the turn of the century, it was the social center in a key outpost of the British Empire. Rubber planters, merchants, military officers, ships’ captains and other colonials stayed there. The years have left legends.

One says that C.M. Phillips, the principal of a nearby school, was summoned in 1902 to shoot a tiger that had taken refuge under the billiard table at the hotel. A stuffed tiger on the premises keeps that legend alive.

Bartender Ngian Tong Doon is credited with mixing the first Singapore Sling 73 years ago. The hotel sells more than 1,000 glasses of the gin-based cocktail each day.

Lounge lizards who kept their elbows on the bar gave Cads Alley its name. It was later changed to Gin’s Alley to honor bartender Ngian and his concoction.

Another legend has it that Joseph Conrad got the idea for “Lord Jim” while on the veranda reading a newspaper story about a British crew that abandoned ship and left 200 passengers to die.

“Feed at Raffles when visiting Singapore,” was Rudyard Kipling’s advice. But he found the beds less than comfortable and suggested sleeping elsewhere.

Those were the days of awesome appetites and massive meals. One dinner menu surviving from 1900 lists 18 courses.

A typical breakfast of that period: porridge, fish, mutton chops, deviled fowl, cold beef, salad, boiled eggs, cheese, toast, tea or coffee and Benedictine.

When Japanese bombers attacked at the start of World War II, Raffles’ band played on in the ballroom behind blackout curtains. Singapore surrendered to the Japanese on Feb. 15, 1942, and with occupation imminent the staff buried the hotel’s silver in the Palm Court garden.

Hotel records show high-ranking officers of Japan’s occupation army lived there. When the war ended in 1945, the silver was dug up and Raffles soon reopened for business.

Somerset Maugham, the late British novelist and short-story writer, once said Raffles “stands for all the fables of the exotic East.”