What’s Left from Hong Kong’s Vanished Mansions, Euston and Eucliffe

Between morning mist and sunsets, waves break and flow back time and again at Repulse Bay. This is Hong Kong’s most popular beach, but it was once even more glamorous: a Hong Kong Riviera that attracted celebrities and literati. 

Little remains of those days. Having escaped partial demolition and been cast a new identity, the shell of Repulse Bay Hotel now serves the area as a shopping and leisure complex. When it opened in 1920, however, it was Hong Kong’s magnet for celebrities and literati. The hotel served as part of the setting for Eileen Chang’s Love in a Fallen City, and hosted Ernest Hemingway and George Bernard Shaw, along with film stars William Holden, Jennifer Jones and Marlon Brando. 

The Repulse Bay Hotel witnessed not only the ebb and flow of Hong Kong’s 20th century social, cultural and political history, but also the disappearance of its enigmatic neighbour, Eucliffe, an eccentric grey mansion that loomed over the shore. It was built  simultaneously with its Bonham Road counterpart, Euston in 1930. 

Enigmatic mansions

Both were family residences of Eu Tong Sen, a tycoon who inherited a Chinese medicine and Malaysian tin mining trade from his father. Eu expanded those businesses, especially the family dispensary, Eu Yan Sang, making traditional Chinese medicine more accessible and affordable in southeast Asia and Hong Kong. By the time of his death in 1941, Eu was one of the Chinese diaspora’s wealthiest merchants and successful philanthropists – and a patron of the architects and craftspeople who designed his homes.

Not only did Eucliffe and Euston share a similar architectural flair, they also shared a doomed fate, falling prey to the city’s classic trajectory of development: built heritage demolished to make way for real estate projects. Eucliffe’s extraordinarily high aesthetic and historic value was further complicated by its history as a defence and execution site during the Battle of Hong Kong and subsequent Japanese occupation, later serving as locations for film productions and photography projects, including Wong Wo-bik’s dreamy Eu Mansions series. Embodying layers of verisimilitude, Eucliffe and its vignettes all merged with the debris, solidifying its mythical status. 

But not everything in both Eucliffe and Euston was lost following their respective demolition. With a private collector’s effort, this untold chapter in Hong Kong’s history provides an unexpected twist to the question of what happened to the ornate villas and townhouses built by Hong Kong’s elite. 

Having been alerted by demolition plans in the late 1980s, private collector Bernard Wong reached out to a member of the Eu family. Wong and his wife are avid travellers, collecting objets d’art and larger furniture pieces around the world. “My time as a student in the UK helped me cultivate my interest in Western art,” he says. “For almost 50 years, I have been appreciating Art Nouveau and Art Deco. Back then, there were not too many people in Hong Kong who collected objects from these periods.” 

This year marks the centenary of the 1925 Paris Exhibition, an event that popularised decorative arts and what we now call Art Deco. The movement had its heydays in the 1920s and 30s, but its design DNA lives on. It was characterised by geometry, symmetry, abstraction and the incorporation of diverse materials from glass to Bakelite. Although Eucliffe and Euston were typical examples of Art Deco, they were the work of architects actively engaged in shaping the colony’s urban landscape with Art Deco influences. These buildings also embodied exquisite applied and decorative arts crafted during the interwar period by artisans who contributed to the Art Deco movement’s aesthetic in Hong Kong.

When the mansions were demolished in the 1980s, Wong’s foresight led to the rescue of hundreds of applied and decorative arts objects inside Eucliffe and Euston. His collection of salvaged objects ranges from stained glass panels and light fixtures to furniture, suits of armour and marble sculptures.

Architecture in the spotlight

The mansions, due to their scale and cost, attracted media coverage during their construction and while they stood vacant. Both Eucliffe and Euston, as the South China Morning Post reported 50 years apart in 1931 and 1981, were noted for their predominant use of marble, from spacious halls to toilets to decorative fireplaces. Stained-glass panels tinted the rooms, played an irreplaceable role in illuminating the mansions’ darkness, and honoured family heritage through coats of arms tailored to them and scenes of chivalry.

At Eucliffe, guests were greeted by two bronze lions and a sculptured fountain, followed by a magnificent red Italian marble entrance hall. The term “gothic” was frequently used to describe various features of the mansion, including the dining room, tower, and archways. The ceilings and floors of different rooms displayed intricate patterns, elaborate plaster mouldings, and mural works, showcasing the creativity and exquisite craftsmanship of artisans.

Euston was distinguished by its hybrid styles and diverse origins of decorative materials. These included a Chinese-style interior in the tower, which honoured the Eu family’s ancestry, two groups of Chinese bronze statues at the covered entrance, an entrance vestibule with Byzantine flair, parquet flooring from Belgium and France, and marble pillars and sculptures influenced by Italian design.

Little, Adams, and Wood, the architectural firm behind Hong Kong’s Art Deco landmark Maryknoll Convent School, was the architect for both Eucliffe and Euston, with construction beginning in 1930. However, the firm did not take full credit for the design, manufacture, or coordination of the applied and decorative arts within these residences. The true artisans behind these intricate interiors were specialist companies and craftspeople who conceptualised, sourced and installed the decorative and functional elements. 

Forgotten artisans

Familiar names, such as Dodwell and Company and the General Electric Company, oversaw the installation of innovative features, including automatic lifts and electrical fittings. But much of the work was done by Arts and Crafts, Limited, a forgotten yet trailblazing decoration and furniture-making company, which was entrusted with the decoration and complete furnishing of both Eucliffe and Euston. Founded in Shanghai by British metalsmith-turned-businessman Samuel James Hicks, the firm later welcomed artist Alfred Llewellyn Tayler, further championing the integration of decoration and architecture. 

In Hong Kong, with its diverse range of services, including stained and etched glass making, Arts and Crafts furnished some of the city’s most significant landmarks in the interwar period, including the Kadoorie-owned Peninsula Hotel. The company also employed William Wheatley Wagstaff, whose tenure at its Shanghai and Hong Kong branches spanned 11 years before he founded his own company and became the lead sculptor behind HSBC’s famous bronze lions, Stephen and Stitt.

Despite efforts by Wong and this article’s author to trace the origins of the salvaged stained glass from Eucliffe and Euston — including enquiries to museums in Singapore, where another Eu mansion once stood — we have not managed to uncover any definitive records or signatures. We know that local companies were frequently commissioned, but the absence of artist signatures on these stained glass pieces complicates attribution. Given the prominence of Arts and Crafts and its entrusted role in decorating both homes, however, it is reasonable to attribute the firm and its craftspeople with the design and production — or at the very least, the coordination — of Eucliffe and Euston’s interiors.

An unexpected connection

Some 11,000 kilometres from Hong Kong, at 6 Via Martelli in Florence — now a hotel with a gourmet restaurant — once stood the studio of Raoul Bigazzi, an Italian-turned-British sculptor active in interwar and post-war Hong Kong and Singapore. Unlike the artisans at Arts and Crafts, Limited, Bigazzi signed his works, leaving no doubt about his craftsmanship. Initially represented by C.E. Warren and Company Limited, he later established his own business and was responsible for the mosaic ceiling of the third-generation Art Deco HSBC Building. Mosaic, a material cherished in Italy, perhaps reflects Bigazzi’s tribute to his cultural background while matching Eu Tong Sen’s appreciation for European art and his connoisseurship.

It is still hard to understand the context of Bigazzi’s sculptures, but many seem to celebrate the beauty and form of the human physique and movements, one of the popular design inspirations in the 1920s and 30s. One sculpture is a half-naked, kneeling woman wearing a chiffon-like skirt and a delicate hair accessory. Another sculpture depicts a woman adorned with a delicate hair accessory, her upper torso partially concealed by her crossed legs, casting a playful glance. A fountain piece features a woman wearing a cap, seated atop cascading water, holding a fish above a shell. As well as manifesting elegance and grace, one sculpture showcases strength and power of a muscular woman wearing a cap and a draped cloth, seated on a carved marble stone.

On display at long last

Many of these remarkable objects from Euston and Eucliffe — puzzle pieces in Hong Kong’s interwar art, architectural and business history — are finally being exhibited to the public. Bernard Wong has previously loaned pieces to exhibitions, including Art Deco: The France-China Connection at the Indra and Harry Banga Gallery. Now the Somewhere in Time Museum has been actively researching the context of the collections while preparing a permanent home for these salvaged treasures. A permanent exhibition is set to open by the end of the year, featuring much of Wong’s Eucliffe and Euston collections.

Though the grand mansions have long vanished, their legacies endure through the objects that once adorned their interiors, offering a rare glimpse into their past splendour.