Bras Basah Complex

Bras Basah Complex is situated right in the middle of town, between Cashin and Bain streets, south facing North Bridge Rd and north facing Victoria St. This area was also a traditional location for book shops. Under the urban renewal plan, Bras Basah Complex was built in the early 80s as a 25 storey high building, with the 1st to 5th storeys being utilised for commercial purpose and the rest for residential flats. The authority named it as Bras Basah Complex hoping to retain the special feature of book stores. This not only attracted many tenants who were once well-known book merchants along Bras Basah Road, but also book stores from other districts. After more than 20 years, the other name for Bras Basah Complex is “City of Books” (Shu Cheng). On the completion of its upgrading, the authority placed its name (in Chinese) In bright red on the walls facing the main road and this has brought about some complaints from people who had thought that the BBCMA had replaced “City of Books” with Bai Sheng Lou (Bras Basah Complex in Chinese). This goes to show that the image of “City of Books” is already well acknowledged. Today, beside bookstores, BBC also has other trades, like stationery, arts and crafts materials, musical instruments, art gallery, framing, pottery, festive cards, religious items, art/design and commercial schools, watches, optical, food, photo-copying/printing’ photo developing, sports goods, CD/VCD, medical clinic, hair salon, dressmaking and 24 hour convenience shop etc. In order to better reflect the unique feature of today’s Bras Basah Complex, we are now working towards our target of being the “ACE Hub - Arts, Cultural & Educational”.