29/50: Lau Pa Sat

As with many other famous food centres in Singapore, Lau Pa Sat (former Telok Ayer Market) started as a wet market and was converted into a hawker centre when the needs of the people around the building changed. Originally made of timber and attap, the market was rebuilt and relocated to the Telok Ayer Basin, with the new building capturing the original octagonal design but redesigning the framework in Victorian-styled cast iron. In 1989 the food centre was given its new name Lau Pa Sat (or “Old Market”), derived from “lau” in Chinese/Hokkien, meaning “old”, and “pa-sat”, a Singaporean Hokkien term loaned from the Malay word “pasar”, meaning “market”.

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