Pedder Street: Past and Present

Perhaps John Thomson’s best-known photo of Hong Kong, this streetscape looks inland along Pedder Street towards its clock tower. Sited at the northern side of the intersection of Pedder Street and Queen’s Road, today’s Queen’s Road Central, the clock tower was completed in 1862 and demolished in 1913. Thomson’s photo, given the clock face and shadows, was taken at about 8.20 am on a summer morning. The figures have been posed, immobilized to avoid any blurring, in the foreground. The sheer busyness of Pedder Street today meant that photographing from its western corner with Des Voeux Road, where Thomson stood on the intersection of Pedder Street and the 1868 harbour praya, would have produced a too crowded image. So the photograph was taken from higher up, on the pedestrian bridge between Worldwide House and Chater Building.