Walking around the Orchard Road | Orchard Road, Singapore 4K Video | Walk tour

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Walking around the Orchard Road | Orchard Road, Singapore 4K Video | Walk tour
Orchard Road, often known colloquially as simply Orchard, is a major 2.5 km (1.6 mi)-long road in the Central Area of Singapore.A famous tourist attraction, it is an upscale shopping area, with numerous internationally renowned department stores, restaurants and coffeehouses located in its vicinity.
The Orchard Planning Area is a planning area as specified by the Urban Redevelopment Authority. It is part of the Central Area located within the Central Region. Orchard is bordered by Newton in the east and north, Tanglin in the west, River Valley in the south and Museum to the southeast.
After more than a century as a two-way thoroughfare, Orchard Road became a one-way street east of Scotts Road in 1974. and entirely in 1977 when Orchard Boulevard was completed.The ever-lively street starts at the junction with Orange Grove Road which is the location of the Orchard Hotel. It then stretches southeast across the Scotts Road-Paterson Hill junction, Orchard MRT station, Bideford Road, Somerset MRT station, Central Expressway, Dhoby Ghaut MRT station, and ends at the junction with Handy Road (just before Prinsep Street), where it becomes Bras Basah Road. It has an extensive underground infrastructure, including underground pedestrian walkways between the malls running underneath the street and other streets in the vicinity. The numbers begin at Handy Road and end at Orange Grove Road.
Orchard Road was already cut in the 1830s, though the new road was not named in George Coleman's 1836 Map of Singapore. In the 1830s the Orchard Road area was the scene of gambier and pepper plantations. Later, nutmeg plantations and fruit orchards predominated, hence its name.
By 1846, the spread of houses had reached up to Tank Road. There were none on the left side and only three or four houses went past Tank Road on the right side of Orchard Road.
One major sight during this period was a Dr. Jun tending his garden, which helped endorse the road's name. He had a garden and plantation at the corner of what is now Scotts Road and Orchard Road.
Towards the later part of the 1840s, graveyards began to appear along the road. By 1846, the Chinese had a large graveyard around what is now the Hilton Singapore Orchard and Ngee Ann City, while the Sumatrans from Bencoolen had their burial ground where the current Hotel Grand Central stands. Later a Jewish cemetery was established; it was located where Dhoby Ghaut MRT station is now and was demolished in 1984.
In the 1860s, Orchard Road had a great number of private houses and bungalows on hills looking down through the valley where the road passed through. Early in the 1890s, King Chulalongkorn, the then King of Siam, acquired "Hurricane House" in the vicinity of Orchard Road through Tan Kim Ching, the Thai Consul in Singapore. Two further pieces of adjoining property fronting onto Orchard Road were purchased in 1897. These subsequently became the site of the Royal Thai Embassy at 370 Orchard Road.[10] Hurricane House was sold off around 1909[11] shortly before the King's death.
In the early 20th century, it was noted that Orchard Road "present[ed] the appearance of a well-shaded avenue to English mansion[s]," comparable in its "quiet but effective beauty to Devonshire lanes."
In the 1960s, a group of Indonesian forces bombed the MacDonald House in Singapore, just a few months before Singapore got its independence from Malaysia. A number of people were killed and the police managed to execute the two military officers responsible for this.