Imagine buying a landed home in an estate where your colleagues are also your neighbours. It could be the stuff of dreams or nightmares, but it really happened in the ’60s. Teachers’ Housing Estate was built for exactly that, and you’ll still find it near the junction of Upper Thomson Road and Yio Chu Kang Road today.
Here’s all there is to know about Singapore’s Teachers’ Housing Estate.
Contents
- The estate initially started off as a Teacher’s clubhouse
- First homes for Singapore’s teachers priced at $24,500
- Tagore Avenue & Tu Fu Avenue were named for literary greats
- Why Teachers’ Housing Estate was called the “Whistling Estate”
- Teachers’ Centre had a pool before the site became Poets Villas
- Teachers’ Housing Estate terraces now have asking prices above $4M
- Teachers’ Housing Estate: 999-year landed homes once advertised from $24,500
The estate initially started off as a Teacher’s clubhouse
The housing estate under construction in 1968.
Image credit: Singapore Teachers’ Union, Teachers’ Forum, via NLB
In the late ’60s, the Singapore Teachers’ Union (STU) wanted a clubhouse where members could hang out after school. The problem was money because land in town was too expensive for the union to afford a plot big enough.
So STU worked with a developer to build homes around the proposed clubhouse. The money from selling the houses would pay for the clubhouse, and the teachers who bought them would get a clubhouse right at their doorstep.
The estate was surrounded by farmland, and the only way in from Yio Chu Kang Road was a dirt track. There were no shops nearby either, so the first residents were signing up for a pretty ulu life.
First homes for Singapore’s teachers priced at $24,500
A 1967 ad reproduced by NLB listed the terraces from $24,500, and a corner terrace plot with a basement went for $30,000. That’s the sum of some people’s cash over valuation today!
To help, then Finance Minister Lim Kim San released $5M for teachers’ housing loans to make this happen.
All 256 houses were ready by June 1969. At the official opening in 1971, teachers owned more than half of the homes in the neighbourhood, occupying roughly 70% of the estate. Sales had also been opened to other buyers, so you didn’t have to be a teacher to live at a Teachers’ Housing Estate address.
Tagore Avenue & Tu Fu Avenue were named for literary greats
If you’re into history and literature, you might have also recognised some of the road names in the area, and how they were named after poets and figures from the literary world.
Tagore Avenue is named after Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913. Tu Fu Avenue is named after Du Fu, one of China’s greatest poets. Munshi Abdullah Avenue honours the writer known as the father of modern Malay literature, who also taught Stamford Raffles Malay.
Other roads in the estate carry the names of Chinese poets Li Po and Su Tung Po, Persian poet Omar Khayyam, Indian playwright Kalidasa, and poet-philosopher Muhammad Iqbal.
Why Teachers’ Housing Estate was called the “Whistling Estate”
While the idea was idyllic in theory, the early days for residents living in Teachers’ Housing Estate was far from peaceful. In October 1969, just months after the first families moved in, burglars broke into homes while most of the residents were working in school.
To tackle this, the residents formed a vigilante group and used police whistles to call neighbours for help. That’s how the estate got its “Whistling Estate” nickname. The break-ins eventually stopped once more families moved in, police patrols increased, and residents got watchdogs.
Teachers’ Centre had a pool before the site became Poets Villas
Somewhere in 1971, the teachers wanted to build a pool for their clubhouse but were lacking the funds to do so. To raise the money, they held a trishawthon that raised $34,671. More than 300 teachers pledged another $35,540 towards the upgrade, and the government chipped in a $100,000 loan to make this a reality.
A trishaw fundraiser for Teachers’ Centre in 1973.
Image credit: Singapore Teachers’ Union, Mentor, via NLB
Teachers’ Centre finally opened in the second half of 1973, but the swimming pool was added in 1975, the tennis court in 1978, and the squash courts only arrived about 10 years after that.
Teachers’ Centre in 1975.
Image credit: Singapore Teachers’ Union, Mentor, via NLB
The clubhouse lasted almost 40 years. In 2010, STU leased the land to a private developer and moved its office to Serangoon Road. The site is now Poets Villas, a cluster housing development, and the rest of the estate is still standing.
Teachers’ Housing Estate terraces now have asking prices above $4M
Image credit: Sharon Teng, via NLB
A quick check on PropertyGuru turned up 3 terraces listed for sale at $4.6M to $4.9M, or $2,705.10 to $2,955.37 psf based on land area. In terms of actual sales, 99.co puts the average over the past 6 months at $4.38M.
Image credit: PropertyGuru
Most homes here are on 999-year leases that started back in 1885, so there’s still plenty of lease left to justify the pricetag.
Teachers’ Housing Estate: 999-year landed homes once advertised from $24,500
If you walk through Teachers’ Housing Estate today, you won’t find the clubhouse or its pool, just rows upon rows of terrace houses. Many have been rebuilt into 3- and 4-storey homes, but the road signs still carry the names of the poets the first residents picked.
Read other related articles:
- The history behind the landed homes at Jalan Chempaka Puteh & Jalan Chempaka Kuning
- The Tiong Bahru block with 3 addresses & a WWII air raid shelter
- The HDB-built estate on Christmas Island
- Quirky features in older resale HDB flats explained
Cover image adapted from: Singapore Teachers’ Union, Teachers’ Forum, Sharon Teng, NLB
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