Press Coverage - Storeys from another time

In case you ever wondered: the 7th Storey Hotel at 229 Rochor Road doesn't have only seven floors. There are nine levels, including a rooftop space and a tiny shed to house its lift engine..

Walk along beach road today and you can't miss it: a stump of lego digging into a field, itself a green oasis dwarfed by the surrounding giants of Suntec city, Parkview Square and The Gateway.

But 49 years ago when it was first erected, the hotel was the tallest protrusion on the southern skyline. "If you got the roof, it had the best views of the beach," says Miss Shirley Fong, 26, its operations manager.

Built by the late property magnate Wee Thiam Siew, who also owned the Ban Leong Group that distributed 555 Brand cigarettes, the top floor offered panoramas of ships sliding across a proverbial blue horizon. With the advent of land reclamation, the seascapes gave way to flyovers. Following urbanisation directives, shophouses, a Chinese temple and passar malam markets in the hotel's immediate surrounds were also pulled down.

"I don't know, maybe it's fengshui," Miss Fong says. "People say the two knives of The Gateway opposite don't cut directly into us. Business is good, we have an occupancy rate of 90 per cent."

Those more acquainted with urban mythology will whisper of a second rumour: The one special room in the guesthouse was where a Singapore politician once spent his wedding night.

Miss Fong laughs at the anecdote: " That's probably not the real reason. It's privately-owned and a safe building, so why tear it down? politicians weren't the only VIPs who stayed here. In its heyday, many celebrities used to visit the hotel's nightclub."

After Independence in 1965, most of its guests were traders from Indian and Indonesia. Mr David Wee, 39, grandson of the building's founder, says people from the past-up to 30, 40 years ago- come back to revisit. "They like its old charm. We've had to renovate the building, but we try to preserve its essential look."

A black 1950s Smith wall clock, brown with age but still chiming the hours, stares out of the lobby. The pride and joy of the hotel, however, is its fully manual "cage" lift, reputedly the last of its kind in Singapore, and entrusted to the custodianship of four post-retirement Uncles. Some of them have been guiding guests up and down the building for more than 40 years.

Night-shift Uncle Foo Geong Wu, 74, guards his plastic chair in the lift in his favourite corner, where he eats bananas when midnight hunger pangs strike.

"Three minutes from ground floor to the top," he says in Mandarin. "I've never got stuck in it. It's always working."

Time, it seems, has not stolen too many secrets from the building. Other relics from the past are still in use today. There are rooms within rooms: Built-in wardrobes made of cement with creaking teak doors. Sofas have done through upholstery incarnations of plum and turquoise covers to today's orange.

Other things, however, had to go. The brick mosaic bearing the words "The 7th Storey Hotel" on the hotel's facade could not be salvaged. When hits of the lettering fell off last year, the whole sign went.

"We were sad," says Miss Fong. " But I guess you have to move and adapt."

Today small green cursive letters nestling in a yellow panel announce the building's latest name "The New 7th Storey Hotel".

Since the Asian economic crisis of 1997, fewer traders have been putting themselves up at the hotel's 38 rooms. Most guests now are backpackers from Europe and North America, who rent air-conditioned facilities from $17-$79 per night and splay themselves near naked on two balconies on Levels 4 and 5.

By some freak trick of topography, the skyscrapers around the hotel do not cast any shadow upon its porches. Here, the afternoon sun eats into the bare walls and verandahs like yellow knives.

"clothes dry quickly," says Miss Fong. "And as for tanning, it's even better than going to the pool. There are actually many things about this building many people don't know about."

There are more stories to tell. Such as the fact that no two floors of the building are alike-the number of rooms decreasing with floor space as each level stacks up like a staircase rammed into a vertical facade.

Or that the building is tilting - very slightly, but still safe - over shifting sands under its foundation.

Perhaps the hotel's best-kept secret is the permanent installation on its eighth floor, in a tiny room next to the hotel office: Mr Lim Tian Suan, a toothless octogenarian who has been working for the Ban Leong Group since 17, and living here as a caretaker since the hotel opened.

Hard of hearing but still sharp, he is usually awake till late watching channel 8, His room is a pantry of lovable junk, from screwdrivers to Watson plastic bags to old clocks and clothes.

When you barge in a 12:30 am after a night-shift interview, he is taken by surprise. Embarrassed to be caught without his dentures and in pink grandmother briefs, he is still enthusiastic enough to dig up an old photo of himself.

"I carried and moved things around," he says in Mandarin, pointing to the strapping young man in the picture."I've no education, didn't go very far. I'm grateful they let me stay here - I wonder for how much longer. People grow old quickly."

Minutes later, you head back to the lift and wait to descend. But Mr Lim trots out one last time to say goodbye. He has hastily pulled on a pair of shorts and buckled on a belt in an effort to smarten up.

"have a nice ride down. I'll switch off the lights for you. Come back again."