HSH AR05 Eng 4-7 OP

The Hongkong Hotel in Central NAMES behind the name The cast of characters in the early evolution of The Hongkong and Shanghai Hotels includes the famous, the rare, and one essential alias. o distil 140 years of our corporate history in just promoters were three businessmen: a Scotsman, Douglas four pages would be an impossible task. Lapraik, whose home became University Hall; a German, However, this brief essay touches on the early Baron Gustav von Overbeck, Consul for Prussia and and colourful fortunes of the company as it Austria-Hungary; and an Englishman with a Dutch Tbegan its long journey in the late 19th century. bloodline, C H M Bosman, a director of Hongkong & Whampoa Dock, and Consul for the Netherlands. Foundations The decision to set up The Hongkong Hotel Company Nobody’s lackey was the right one taken at the worst of times. In By 2 March 1866 when The Hongkong Hotel Company September 1865, along the China Coast, the warning signs was registered with limited liability, Lapraik was feeling of a market crash were gathering although they had their the pinch. He reneged on his share subscription and roots in London where “the bankers’ banker”, Overend, told others to do likewise, potentially depriving the Gurney & Co., was teetering, undermined by liabilities set company of the capital it needed to fulfil its business plan, to peak at £11 million. which was to take over and refurbish the Oriental The knock-on effect shook the Far East, where the Hotel in Wellington Street. house of Dent & Co., “the Precious and Compliant Into the chair slipped von Overbeck. His name Hong”, was already on appeared atop a list of quicksand and would soon “assistants” on the Dent & go under. An unlikely Co. payroll, but the evidence member of staff would indicates the Baron was make the deal of his life in nobody’s lackey. In October providing The Hongkong 1865, as the hotel company Hotel Company with the was forming, the directors site it needed to build the of Dent’s had sold to von first deluxe inn on the Overbeck half the land they erstwhile “barren island”. owned between Queen’s The hotel company’s Road, Pedder’s Wharf provisional board had (Pedder Street) and the a cosmopolitan flavour. Praya. Today, on that EXCERPTED FROM AN ESSAY BY DENIS WAY Foremost among the same site, stands Central Gustav von Overbeck bought the land (circled) and sold it to The Hongkong Hotel Company 5 Building. Records show the sale price as $46,000. In taste for pies of the business kind. When the board December 1866, the Baron sold on the property to the wrested back the management of a hotel they decided was hotel company, of which he was a director, for $190,000 – run-down, Nowrojee became a competitor in the hotel a 300% profit in 14 months. It was a boom-time return in business as well as starting a cross-harbour ferry service the thick of a “disastrous” market slump. which he sold in 1898 to the new “Star” Ferry Co. With such deals, it is little wonder By 1885 a different character was that Dent & Co. went bankrupt and stamping his personality on the The Hongkong Hotel Company, company board. Broker W. Kerfoot financed by a Bank of Paris branch Hughes was a headstrong non- manager named Kaiser, struggled to conformist who owned one-third of make headway. the stock. He brought in from The Baldwin in San Francisco a manager In the mire called Greeley who introduced The Hongkong Hotel outside catering to Hong Kong, and was duly built and told his fellow directors the hotel its “soft opening” on must expand. 29 February 1868 was In 1886 the company bought the presided over for the site where Gloucester Tower company by C H M stands today, for $192,500, Bosman with His raising the funds via Excellency, Sir Richard MacDonnell mortgage debentures. A five- as honoured guest. The colony had its storey north wing went up on deluxe hotel, dubbed by an eager the south of the site. The two- press as “the greatest enterprise of the storey building to its north was kind in China and Japan”. To ensure leased to C P Chater, for him to everything ran smoothly, Charles live in and oversee from his Duggan had been recruited from The Langham in London right Prospectus & Tariff bedroom window the vast Praya left The Hongkong Hotel as manager, but not much later he switched careers to be Reclamation he was lobbying for in an inspector of police. Whitehall. Annual rental was $10,000 and the lease was Although the hotel initially made a loss, von Overbeck until the end of 1890, the year work on the project began. promised better results by the end of 1869. However, investors were likely more reassured by the installation North to the Praya as company secretary of C Langdon Davies, superintendent Something about the property incurred Chater’s wrath as of the Bullion House at the Mint, than by encouraging the visionary was setting up Hongkong Land and words. Hongkong Electric. By August 1888, landlord and tenant were in a dispute, finally resolved by a legal judgement, Non-conformist that struck six months’ profits off the books. The board The board, which included two dynamic entrepreneurs voted to pull the offending building down and extend from Calcutta – chairman E R Belilios and 27-year-old their hotel all the way to the Praya. director C P Chater, gave up on managing the hotel During construction, at two a.m. one night in April themselves and leased it out. A fixed income of $1,900 per 1888, a wall of the original building collapsed, destroying month was demanded of the lessee who, until November two rooms and damaging the dining and billiard rooms, 1883, was Mr Dorabjee Nowrojee – a Parsee baker with a but with no human casualties. The mishap made a mess 6 of an occupancy rate that was already “poor” and delayed Road today). An understanding was reached with the opening of the initial new wing until August 1889. By Hongkong Land over the eastern lot, the hotel company then the architect had his plans approved to build out to already owned the western extremity and Hotung what would be Des Voeux Road when the reclamation was half the real estate in between. But in August 1900 the complete in 1904. The second and final extension opened bold scheme was voted down 6 to 5 at an EGM at in 1892. which E.S. Kelly was present. A plan that would have transformed The Kelly disguise the Central District landscape was The Hongkong consigned to what-might-have-been Hotel verandah by a swinging vote. provided the turf for the colony’s Metamorphosis stockbrokers to The company was doing well enough ply their trade. to attract the Kadoorie brothers In February 1891 under their real name. The hotel’s Sir Ellis Kadoorie “certain well- dining room was bursting at the known brokers”, as the press called seams and good dividends were being them, led by the ubiquitous Chater, paid. In 1906, when the company formed the first proper stock sat on property worth $1.3 million, exchange. Among them was a broker Ellis Kadoorie reportedly held over who traded under the alias of E.S. 10,000 shares. Kelly, then a common practice in the By the early 1920s the Kadoorie colony. He was half of Benjamin & family were in control. They smartly Kelly, and by March 1890 had bought built up a first-class hotel group his first 25 shares in the hotel by acquisition and development in company under his assumed name. Hong Kong, Shanghai and Peking, In reality he was Eleazar (Elly) Silas and changed the company name to Kadoorie. Elly, brothers Moyses and The Hongkong and Shanghai Hotels. Ellis, and nephew Reuben, had all The venerable Hongkong Hotel used the “Kelly” alias in colonial would disappear. The north wing was business circles since arriving from sold to Hongkong Land after a fire in Baghdad via India in the 1880s. 1926 and the southern half with Robert Hotung emulated his its first-floor Gripps restaurant was father by taking the chairman’s seat, pulled down by Central Development and by the turn of the century he and in 1952. The first deluxe hotel in a member of the Hutton Potts clan Hong Kong would be replaced as were the two major shareholders. top Sir Elly Kadoorie with sons, Lawrence and Horace flagship by The Peninsula, a brand In 1900, the board decided the bottom The main staircase in The Peninsula, 1928 name that today stands for deluxe- 140-room hotel was no longer in the plus. Part of the 1923-24 paperwork deluxe category. A scheme was tabled to sell it and associated with the metamorphosis were statutory rebuild in expansive style on 50,000 square feet of declarations attesting that Kelly and Kadoorie, two newly-reclaimed land bordered by Pedder Street, Chater different names among the many behind the brand, were Road, Ice House Street and the New Praya (Connaught one and the same. 7.

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