Orchard Towers

Orchard Towers is an 18-storey office building in Singapore located on the corner of Claymore Road and Orchard Road. Construction was completed in 1975. The first five floors are a combination of bars and retail outlets with the remainder leased as offices.[1] During the day the building functions as a retail and office style building, but the building is best known as a landmark[2] entertainment complex famously described as the "Four Floors of Whores" or simply the "Four Floors".[3][4][5] In addition, one of the towers houses 58 freehold condominium residential units.[1]

Orchard Towers
General information
StatusComplete
TypeHigh-rise
ClassificationCommercial, Residential
LocationOrchard Road, Singapore
Address400 Orchard Road, Singapore 238875
CountrySingapore
Coordinates1°18′25″N 103°49′44.5″E
Named forOrchard Road
Opened1975 (1975)
ManagementChesterton International
Height79 m (259 ft)
Technical details
Floor count18

Orchard Tower houses the Embassy of Romania on the 8th floor,[6] Honorary Consulate of Mauritius on the 9th floor[7] and the Embassy of Cambodia on the 10th floor.[8]

History

A cinema was located on level 4 in the early 1980s. It was subsequently converted into a nightclub and performance space called Top Ten, later renamed Top 5.[9] By the mid-2000s the building's nighttime prostitution had come to dominate its daytime retailing of electronic goods and jewellery. The sex workers and their clients were mostly foreign.[10] By the mid-2010s the building was ageing and run-down in comparison to the majority of up-market shopping malls on Orchard Road, with its retail units tenanted by sex shops, beauty parlours and girlie bars.[11]

Overview

Orchard Towers differs from conventional Singapore red light districts such as that in Geylang. Instead of providing brothels, Orchard Towers serves as an establishment where clients are able to meet and pick up prostitutes whom they take to nearby hotels. These prostitutes are mostly freelancers who are in Singapore on tourist visas and thus working illegally, and the complex is thus regularly raided by police. The prostitutes are primarily from Thailand, Philippines, Indonesia with a few from Vietnam and Eastern Europe. In the early 2010s well-known bars in the shopping mall included Ipanema, Top 5 (formerly known as Top Ten), Harry's Bar and Naughty Girl.[12][13]

The mall includes basic amenities such as ATMs, as well as a supermarket and a convenience store.[1]

Orchard Towers double murder

On 2 January 2002, Michael McCrea (also known as Mike Townsend), a British expatriate in his 40s, murdered his driver friend Kho Nai Guan (46) and Kho's fiancée Lan Ya Ming (30) in his apartment in Pinewood Garden. Audrey Ong had helped McCrea in the murder. After the murders, the bodies of the two deceased were left inside a silver Daewoo Chairman 400 which was abandoned on the 6th storey of the Orchard Towers car park. Peter Chong discovered the car on 7 January 2002 and informed the car park's security guards, who informed the Singapore police. The case was known as the Orchard Towers double murder.[14]

On 7 February 2003, Audrey Ong was sentenced to 12 years in jail for helping McCrea to dispose the bodies. On 27 September 2005, Michael McCrea was extradited to Singapore on Singapore Airlines Flight SQ228. On 29 June 2006, Michael McCrea was sentenced to a total of 24 years in jail for two amended charges of culpable homicide not amounting to murder (10 years for each amended charge) and one charge of causing evidence to disappear (4 years for the third charge).[14]


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See also

References
  1. "Orchard Towers Singapore | 400 Orchard Road". Orchard Towers. Retrieved 29 December 2019.
  2. Goh, Robbie B. H (2005). Contours of Culture: Space and Social Difference in Singapore. ISBN 9789622097315.
  3. "Singapore: Entertainment – Sleazy Singapore" (PDF). Lonely Planet Publications. Archived from the original (PDF) on 7 June 2011.
  4. Loh Chee Kong (15 May 2007). "Orchard Towers in the crosshairs". Channel NewsAsia. Archived from the original on 17 May 2007.
  5. "Orchard Towers". Time Out Singapore. Archived from the original on 21 December 2008.
  6. "Contact information and map". Embassy of Romania in the Republic of Singapore. Retrieved 24 January 2019.
  7. "Consulate of the Republic of Mauritius - Singapore". www1.govmu.org. Retrieved 29 December 2019.
  8. "Embassy of Cambodia in Singapore". www.embassypages.com. Retrieved 29 December 2019.
  9. "About TOP 5". TOP 5. Archived from the original on 29 May 2009. Retrieved 7 December 2009.
  10. Goh, Robbie B.H. (2005). Contours of Culture: Space and Social Difference in Singapore. Hong Kong University Press. p. 131. ISBN 9789622097315.
  11. Rosie Milne (6 May 2016). "Sex in Singapore: expats who spend their evenings seeking sleaze". Telegraph. London.
  12. Lainez, Nicolas (October 2011). A Foot In and a Foot Out: Sex Migration of Vietnamese Women to Singapore (Report). Alliance Anti Trafic. p. 9 – via ResearchGate.
  13. Chong CK. "Orchard Towers Hookers Return After Raids". Straits Times, 23 December 2001.
  14. "Guilty As Charged: Michael McCrea killed a woman and a man he called his brother". The Straits Times. 16 May 2016. Retrieved 29 December 2019.
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