Heritage Trails :: Civic District Trail II :: Ministry of Information, Communications and The Arts Building

The colonial style building with 911 windows across the road used to be the Hill Street Police Station and Barracks. Completed in 1934, the largest government building of its time, this 6-storey building with its arcades and central courtyards was designed in the neo-classical style then fashionable in England. During the Japanese Occupation, it was used by the Japanese military police, the Kempeitai, as a holding area and torture chamber for prisoners. After the war, it reverted to being a police station housing the arms and explosives branch of the police force. After the police vacated the building in 1980, the National Archives of Singapore, the Official Assignees and Public Trustees and the Board of Film Censors took over the building in 1983. It was gazetted as a national monument in 1998. The present occupant, the Ministry of Information, Communications and the Arts (MICA), moved into the building in 2000. A Civic District Trail (CDT) marker and a heritage corner on the history of MICA building are found at the entrance facing the River Valley Road.

Marker Text:
This building, home of the Ministry of Information, Communications and the Arts (MICA), was the old Hill Street Police Station and Barracks. Designed by the Public Works Department in 1930 under the direction of F Dorrington Ward, the building took four years to complete. It was then the largest building in Singapore.

The 6-storey building consisted of the Police Station, charge rooms, offices, garages, quarters for 125 married policemen and accommodation for 144 single Inspectors of Police. It remained a police station during the Japanese Occupation and a police post up to 1980. With the introduction of the housing priority scheme for the Singapore Police Force, the policemen were able to buy their own flats and the last occupant left in 1979.

The building was renamed Hill Street Building on 12 May 1983 and served as offices for the National Archives of Singapore, the Official Assignee and Public Trustees and the Board of Film Censors till 1997, when it was closed for renovations. The building reopened in January 2000 and is now known as MICA Building.