The Peak Lookout

History

The site was first used in 1888 as a rest place and workshop for British engineers building the Peak Tram line. In 1901 the government took over the site and built a chair shelter for sedan chair carriers. An 1898 official report noted that a level area was being prepared for chairs and that a permanent structure was proposed; shortly afterward the masonry and roof were completed, providing shelter for coolies. The building was finished in 1902, divided into two sections—one enclosed for public chairs and one open for private chairs—with blue stone walls, granite dressings, cement concrete floors and tiled roofs.

It has been suggested that the stone may have come from the demolished Governor's Peak residence, Mountain Lodge. The shelter opened to the public in 1923, when sedan chair carriers could serve tourists. During the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong from 1941 to 1945, the building was believed to have been used as a Japanese army police station. Its catering history began in 1947, when a proposal was made to convert it into an open-air café serving light refreshments.

According to a 1977 official of the Peak Tram, the building has been used as a café since that date; later modifications included wood and glass doors fitted into the arches and wooden flooring laid over the original concrete floor, but otherwise the structure remains as originally built.

Architecture

The Peak Lookout was originally built in the Arts and Crafts style, popular in late-Victorian and Edwardian times, though renovations have altered its appearance. The roof tiles have been replaced with Chinese ones. The single-storey building has a red, pitched roof reminiscent of an English country cottage, with stone walls, arched windows, black and white half-timbering on the gable, and a visible chimney stack.

The garden surrounds include an old boundary wall and a variety of trees, shrubs and flowers. Inside, the restaurant is dimly lit and decorated with old photographs of life on the Peak generations ago, retaining much of the earlier interior ambiance. It is one of few remaining examples of Arts and Crafts architecture in Hong Kong and attracts both local patrons and foreign visitors.