SITUATED near the waterfront, the Yau Ma Tei Police Station was completed in 1922 and is characterised by an English Edwardian architectural design.

The station was much smaller when it was built some 60 years ago, but due to reclamation projects near the waterfront of Yau Ma Tei, the station was extended and a new phase-the New Block -was built to form a police compound, which is quite unique.

Because of its location, a pier was built behind the station which was responsible for security in its district as well as on the sea. Indeed,police officers of Yau Ma Tei Police Station assisted in the sea rescue of plane crash casualties in 1967.

Remnants of its earliest days remain in the form of memories and historical items that adorn its interior:a life buoy, copper oil lamp and a wooden ship's wheel.

The three-storey Old Block, painted white and light blue, is composed mainly of offices with the third floor ,designated as barracks for women police officers. The building is spacious and linked up by long corridors and wooden doors decorated with arch-shaped lintels fitted with panes of artistically carved glass. Sunlight coming through the windows is really quite magnificent.

The stone staircases and wooden handrails are original and well-preserved, as are the second and third storey teak floors. The wooden floors on thelower levels,having become worn and then dilapidated by age and pest infestation, were replaced with plastic tiles affording easier maintenance if not originality.

Overlooking the compound are a series of chimneys that stretch out of the Old Block's roof which is composed of black tiles set in acriss-cross pattern, marking yet another of the station's unique characteristics-fireplaces in the building's bigger rooms.

Yau Ma Tei Police Station has been classified as a historical building by the Antiquities and Monuments Office. According to a development plan, the offices and facilities in the New Block will be moved to the Old Block until completion of the new Yau Ma Tei Police Station. After that, the New Block will be demolished, while the Old Block will be opened to the public as a Hong Kong landmark.

[thanks to Ms K S Li, DVCY, and S K Wong, ASVCY, for their imput]