This article first appeared in City & Country, The Edge Malaysia Weekly on November 14, 2022 - November 20, 2022

Winner | The Marian Boutique Lodging House | Urban Village Sdn Bhd

As we explored The Marian Boutique Lodging House, the heavens opened, further enhancing the sense of nostalgia imbued in the lovingly restored 137-year-old colonial heritage property. Standing proudly on a hill in the heart of old Kuching city, Sarawak, the handsome black-and-white boutique lodging house boasts a sunken garden, a pool and lush lawns.

Colonial architectural influences have been retained, including, on the façade the scalloped timber fascia boards leading up to the 6ft wooden cross placed by missionaries as a symbol of their Anglican faith; floor-to-ceiling timber French windows with square lattice frames; and Tudor-inspired wooden balconies and stair railing.

In addition, vestiges of the building’s past — it was the family residence of Kapitan Ong Ewe Hai — remain in the green glazed floral board tiles and semi-circular tiles that decorate the secondary terracotta roof, the solid belian door frames with a typical Chinese door threshold several inches high, the subtle moulding on the solid timber panel windows, the geometric pattern of the Chinese window frames and the jade green Chinese breezeway tiles in the airwell balcony.

“The ceramic green roof tiles are all original. A couple of these were broken … it was not easy to find the exact same [tiles] but we tried our best to source [for them]. We wanted to retain the whole look because the whole idea was to keep as much of all the original parts [as possible],” says Rosemarie Wong, as she gives City & Country a tour of the restored property that opened for booking in 2017. Wong is a director of Urban Village Sdn Bhd — project conceptualiser and proposer, tenant, main contractor and interior designer of the property — as well as a director of Trio Tower Sdn Bhd, the operator and manager of the lodging house.

Perched on one of the highest spots on the present-day St Thomas Bishop’s House compound and overlooking the city, the building was originally a two-storey bungalow, solidly built from belian timber and sunbaked bricks. When the house was completed in 1885, it overlooked the street (now named Ewe Hai Street), which was lined with Ewe Hai’s shophouses on both sides, and the Sarawak River a short distance away.

Wong notes that the building was home to three generations of the Ong family, including Ewe Hai’s son Kapitan Ong Tiang Swee and great-grandson, former federal minister Tan Sri Ong Kee Hui.

The property was later sold for a few thousand dollars in the 1930s to the Anglican Mission, had a new floor added to it and was used as a boarding house for local and outstation students until 1967.

In fact, Wong’s father had been put under the care of the older girls in the St Mary boarding house in the 1940s and 1950s. “My father, originally from Limbang, a northern division in Sarawak, was then a young kid of six, and his older sisters were boarders at this Kuching boarding house. He and a few other boys were too young to be at the St Thomas boys’ boarding house, so they were put under the care of the older girls in St Mary’s,” she shares.

“These are photos provided by the old boarders and descendants of the Ong family,” says Wong, referring to the framed black-and-white photographs that bedeck the walls of the main reception and lobby area on the ground floor of the main building.

The photographs are not the only mementos of the past as myriad vintage paraphernalia — old-school knick-knacks, old suitcases, filing cabinets, typewriters, glass jars, wooden cabinets, school benches, an old upright piano and an antiquated fire extinguisher — are all neatly displayed in the common areas. Many of these antiques and curios were from Wong’s own collection or donated to The Marian.

Before Urban Village came into the picture in 2012, the property had been used by the Anglican Diocese as a Diocesan Centre with meeting rooms and a guest house. “The guest house operated on a donation system. Over the years, contributions to the church funds became inconsistent — with little or no funds for upkeep and maintenance. By 2008, the building was in a dilapidated state, the two side wings were tearing away from the main building and the chapel was badly infested with termites,” says Wong.

Discussions were then held with the bishop on ways to create a sustainable income for the church. “We proposed that the church should maximise the commercial opportunities in its portfolio for a more stable and consistent income, rather than be solely dependent on contributions and having to constantly solicit for public donations,” says Wong.

“When the bishop decided to look into that portfolio, we were notified that the place was up for tender, which was almost closing. You know it’s not possible to rush an architectural tender in three days. So, I approached an architect friend for a hand-sketched conceptual [design]. I knew roughly what we wanted to do: a lodging house, fully restored and kept as it is. We wrote the project paper and put it in, prayed about it, and to our surprise, we got it. And then the work began.”

All the work to restore and repurpose The Marian, which took five long years, has finally paid off as the property, with its unique history and architectural style, has now found a new lease of life as a lodging house for travellers and tourists, and is affordable enough for visiting priests and clerics from outstation and international parishes. Comprising 40 rooms, all en-suite, the property is surrounded by the bustling old streets of Kuching and is just a few minutes’ walk from the Kuching Waterfront, Main Bazaar and Carpenter Street (Old Chinatown).

The Marian Boutique Lodging House has won the Excellence in Conservation & Adaptive Reuse Award at The Edge Malaysia Property Excellence Awards 2022. The purpose of this award is to recognise the best conservation and adaptive reuse projects that have preserved their history and heritage and reintroduced them to a new generation.

Preserving the historical and heritage values of this unique property was the key driver of the restoration process, says Wong. “From the start, we decided to maintain and preserve the original character of the building as much as possible. Therefore, every decision made was referenced back to our guiding principle — to save whatever we could.

“The cabinets and cupboards, tables and chairs, and whatever else that had been left on the property that we could salvage, we kept and restored. We’ve also kept the beautiful patterned [louvred window glass slats] that I imagine would probably be from the 1930s, as they were all found on the [second] floor of the property that was added on after the Anglican Mission took over in 1933.”

Materials and finishings used in the renovation process were then selected to recreate the original look of the building. “While it may not have been possible to use the exact same products due to the passage of time, the same class of materials were used. For example, the new wing was tiled with terracotta tiles to mimic the original terracotta clay tiles [that are used] throughout the lower ground floor of the main house,” she explains.

In the main building, the ground floor was converted into the main reception lobby and common spaces. On the right side of the building, an infinity pool was added, following the natural dip of the landscape.

Another addition is the Chapel Wing, with rooms overlooking the swimming pool. “As the main structure of the chapel extension had collapsed, we decided to rebuild this wing entirely. However, the profile of the original roof shape was preserved.

“Discarded windows and doors from the old 19th-century government housing quarters along Jalan Uplands were salvaged and reused for the new wing,” says Wong.

The first and second floors are the main accommodation floors. “The building had already been divided into rooms on these floors. However, these rooms were too small for our purposes. There were also no attached bathrooms. So, the layouts had to be replanned without compromising the structure.”

The first floor of the building had already been extended at the sides to create more space for the Diocesan guest house, but the biggest challenge was on the second floor, Wong explains. “We decided that the high ceiling should be maintained and the timber structures exposed to accentuate the beauty of the original timberwork. Extensions at the side of the building were also necessary — similar to what had been done on the first floor.”

Meanwhile, two bedrooms with the best views in the main house had to be sacrificed for the fire staircase to keep the overall façade intact, says Wong.

The guestrooms at The Marian are named after former matrons such as Betty Johnson and Mary and Caroline Sharp and housemistress Thelma Cook; the McDougalls, founders of the mission school; as well as St Nicholas, the boarding school for the younger kids of the mission school. Even the property was aptly named after the boarders who once inhabited this building, as “Marian” is used to refer to the girls from St Mary’s girls’ school.

The popular dining hall KANTIN at The Granary, which was a collapsed godown facing the main house, was creatively restored along with the main house.

According to Wong, The Granary was formerly a “hanging garden” and courtyard that fronted the Ong family mansion back in the 1880s. She says the place was once a playground for the young children of the family, but was later used as a storage cum godown to store grains and other crop produce.

“The ex-boarders of St Mary’s girls’ school recall looking out of the boarding house’s windows and seeing men lying around smoking opium. It was also used as a car repair workshop of sorts, so The Granary property has certainly had its fair share of colourful past!” she adds.

For this restoration process, all the brick walls and wooden columns that were still standing were kept, while other parts of the old structure that were rotten and termite-infested could not be salvaged. The patina of the old walls and timber were maintained and kept as is, according to Wong.

A new roof and the mezzanine floor were replaced, with the latter built using recycled timber and old window frames as partitions, in keeping with the original rustic feel of the place, she says. “Even the bar area was designed with salvaged timber and metal, and at the back of the bar, the old brickwork was kept exposed.”

The restoration project is profound for Wong. To her, heritage buildings are architectural and historical monuments that are crucial to conserving and maintaining the identity of a city.

“The reason we wanted to do it was because we have a lot of beautiful heritage properties in Kuching and, sadly, we lost many of them. So, for me, it was important to do this project, to be a pioneer, to lead the way in showing that an old heritage building that’s completely dilapidated can actually be restored and repurposed for our modern usage, rather than tearing it down.

“We wanted to give this imposing building a new lease of life, find a more practical use for this church property, rejuvenate the community around it, and repurpose it into something that will impact and benefit local trades and businesses,” she adds.

Wong says the project, which cost nearly RM6 million, was also a way of ensuring that the church has a steady income for the next 30 years. “We were only willing to come in to do this if they could guarantee us a long lease because of the amount of money that we pumped into the project, and it is going to take us time to recoup all that.

“Cost aside, I actually love old buildings. I love repurposing old properties and materials, as you can see. I find immense joy in doing that and I’m just really passionate about this,” she says.

Save by subscribing to us for your print and/or digital copy.

P/S: The Edge is also available on Apple's App Store and Android's Google Play.