SOURCE: BRITISH MALAYA
Charles Edwin Spooner was a British engineer who supervised the construction of many of the historic buildings which have become part of the heritage of Malaysia. He arrived in the country in 1891 after working in Ceylon as an engineer for 14 years and took up the appointment as State Engineer of the Selangor Public Works Department.
Many of the buildings he worked on were principally designed by the British architect Arthur Bennison Hubback who created 25 of the landmark heritage buildings which we see today, particularly in the centre of Kuala Lumpur, including Jamek Mosque, the old Post Office building, the Town Hall and High Court, as well as the Kuala Lumpur and Ipoh railway stations. Many of Hubback’s buildings which Spooner worked on feature domes, minarets and horseshoe arches reminiscent of medieval India and have been described as Neo-Mughalist or Indo-Saracenic in style.
Spooner was also an important figure in the expansion of the railway system having been appointed General Manager of the Federated Malay States Railways in 1901. In an era of rapid development of rail transport which had been primarily used for the transport of tin, he reorganized, expanded and modernized the network, amalgamating the state railways into a national network, creating connections between the various states. He was also responsible for the creation of the FMS Central Railways Office (now the Textile Museum) in Kuala Lumpur to serve as the headquarters of the railway sytem.
In 1904 Spooner was awarded the CMG (Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George) awarded for exceptional service abroad and died suddenly of appendicitis in Kuala Lumpur in 1909.
Copy and paste:
18/1/2025: 10.15 p.m
No comments:
Post a Comment