This picture was most likely taken near the end of the Padang where the Singapore Cricket Club was located. It shows the old civic quarters of the city centre on the north bank of the Singapore River as well as the Central Business District skyline on the south bank. Prominent landmarks shown include: Anderson Bridge (left background), completed in 1910 as a replacement for Cavenagh Bridge and named after Sir John Anderson, Governor of the Straits Settlements and High Commissioner for the Federated Malay States (1904-1911); Fullerton Building (centre background), the neo-classical building opened by then Governor Sir Hugh Clifford in 1928 and subsequently used to house the General Post Office and other government offices; Bank of China Building (right background), one of the first modern skyscrapers in Singapore when it was completed in 1954; Empress Place Building (right centre), erected in 1865 and initially referred to as Government Offices before it gained its new moniker after the public square in front of it was named after Queen Victoria in 1907; and the bronze statue of Sir Stamford Raffles (right foreground), first erected on the Padang in 1887, then moved to the front of the Victoria Memorial Hall in 1919 where it was framed within a colonnade, removed shortly after the fall of Singapore to the Japanese in 1942, and reinstated at its pre-war site in 1949 without the colonnade.
