Pearl Bank Apartments was a high rise
private residential building on Pearl's Hill in Outram,
near the Chinatown area of Singapore. As the tallest and densest
residential building in Singapore when completed in June 1976, Pearl Bank
Apartments was one of Singapore's pioneers of high rise high density living and
influenced urban development in Singapore and other cities across Southeast
Asia.
The Pearl Bank Apartments was the first all-housing
project to be undertaken in the Urban Renewal Department of the Housing
and Development Board's Sale of Sites programme. It was the programme's third
sale in 1969, aimed at rejuvenating the Central Area and providing more
residential options for the middle and upper-middle families. Pearl Bank
Apartments was one of the responses and initiatives introduced to intensify
land use for residential purposes, alongside People's Park Complex located
just nearby in Chinatown and Golden Mile Complex on the eastern edge
of Singapore's Central Business District (CBD).
