Endangered Architecture in Saigon

A few weeks ago, I was writing to a friend about to come visit advising not to spend too much time in Saigon; the real treasures of Vietnam were outside the city in the countryside. That opinion has changed dramatically over the past few weeks, mostly thanks to a book that I found recently. "Exploring Ho Chi Minh City" by Tim Doling offers 23 walking tours around Saigon and surrounding areas. So far, I've only done two, but those two tours have easily doubled my knowledge of Saigon. The short story is that if you come visit, you should plan on doing one of these walking tours with me.

This book has confirmed what I already suspected about Saigon: this isn't a city that parades its best sites in broad daylight. I've tried a few times to just go on walks around Saigon and see what happens and usually that results in coming back home a few hours later hot, exhausted and convinced that all there is in Saigon are motorbikes and banh mi stands. The best of Saigon is hidden down inconspicuous alleyways, behind walls or locked up in controversial stories that aren't immediately apparent. After comparing a few walking tours from the book with a few walking tours without the book, the book definitely wins. 

A few weeks ago, nerding out on Saigon's history, I visited Tim Doling's blog and read a series he did on buildings around the city set to be torn down. They are all French colonial buildings between 80 and 150 years old. They are also mostly in district one; the center of the city where property is the most valuable and the most development is taking place. The series of blog posts is called "Date with the Wrecking Ball" and, while many of the buildings make an appearance in Tim's tour book, there isn't a specific tour dedicated to visiting the sites of Saigon with the shortest expiration date. Overcome with a sense of urgency, I plotted out a route on google maps and created a little tour based on Tim's blog posts that would show you most of the old French colonial buildings destined for the wrecking ball. 

Saigon: "Date With the Wrecking Ball" Tour

Started as the equivalent of a French VFA and ended up as the
Vietnamese lottery commission before it was shuttered last
year and now serves as a moped parking lot

A few days later, we walked the tour ourselves to make sure we saw these little gems before they got knocked down. Some were more impressive than others, but all of them had a unique story that told the story of Saigon's turbulent 20th century. Most buildings started out as French administrative offices but shifted to more of a social purpose as French influence waned towards the middle of the century.  Then they were taken over by the South Vietnamese or Americans until 1975, when the North came in and needed their own office spaces. As the southern economy liberalized in the 1980s and 1990s, the old buildings transitioned from government to commercial purpose - although many of them still house state offices. 

One of the 1975 evacuation points

There are plenty of poignant landmarks, too. The old Pittman apartment building that served as the stage for one of the most memorable images of the Vietnam war is on the route (that building will be knocked down any day now). There's also the old French police station and jail right next to the cathedral along with an old printing press that published some of the first romanized Vietnamese newspapers. An old factory on colonial Saigon's main avenue has been converted into an upmarket cafe and clothing store. However, I think the building that most struck me was the Grand Magazin Charner: the first shopping mall in Indochina. 

A visit to the old staircase of the first shopping mall in Indochina

The Grand Magazin Charner was most recently used as a grocery store, but its doors were shuttered last year in preparation for demolition. The building itself is beautiful and certainly historical, but it has been remodeled so many times that it's hard to recognize the old French colonial architecture. What is impossible to miss, though, is the grand mosaic staircase parading down to the ground floor. I had read so much about this staircase and looked at so many pictures of it, but with the clear understanding that the building was now closed and inaccessible. Allegedly, a local architecture student broke into the building late last year to take the final pictures of the staircase. However, I was pleasantly surprised to find one of the doors to the condemned building wide open and a friendly guard named Cu let us in to get our own glimpse of the lobby and staircase. It made our day to be able to see perhaps the most endangered piece of art in Saigon. There is talk of saving, or at least preserving, the staircase, but its fate is in jeopardy right now. I'm amazed that, given its artistic and historical value, a museum hasn't tried to acquire it. If there are any multi-millionaires out there looking for a nice mosaic staircase, you might be able to get what you need here in Saigon.

Detail of the mosaic

In return for showing us the staircase, Cu only asked for a picture of us in return. When we tried to send it to him, we found out that he doesn't have email. So, we went to a photocopy shop across the street and framed a print of our photo for just $2. I'm not sure he appreciated it all that much, but if you want to see the staircase for yourself, you might try offering Cu a framed picture documenting your visit with him.

Our friendly security guard, Cu

After our little tour, I reflected on the idea of all of these buildings being wiped off the map in the coming year. What affected me most was a little anecdote about the Catinat building, another one of those structures that had seen a dozen tenets over the past century and held books worth of stories about Saigon's struggles through the 20th century. When the French were building it in the 1920s, excavators discovered the foundation of Saigon's old city wall. Did this stop the developers? No. They went on with their construction project and buried the evidence of Saigon's pre-colonial past under an office building. I'm not saying that the Vietnamese should knock the Catinat building down out of spite for building over their old city wall, but in the midst of debate over preserving these old French buildings, I think it is important to remember that the French developed over an existing city. You don't see many structures in Saigon that pre-date the French colonial era. I certainly don't think that the Vietnamese have any moral obligation to preserve these old buildings and it makes sense to me that the Vietnamese would want to build a city for themselves. 

There's also the simple value of these properties. These old French buildings are at most five stories high and yet they are surrounded by modern skyscrapers 30-40 stories high. The opportunity cost of keeping these French colonial structures is high and, in a developing country like Vietnam, they don't necessarily have the luxury of sacrificing millions of dollars in development projects for cultural heritage - especially when the cultural heritage in question is of colonial dubiousness. 

A modernist mosaic beneath L'Usine cafe. I'm thinking that it
depicts water buffalo. 

However, I still certainly hope that the city will figure out a way to preserve these buildings and I do think that there is commercial, as well as cultural, value in doing so. There is talk of incorporating the old facades into new developments or, in the case of the Grand Magazin Charner, incorporating the staircase into the new building built in its place. Southeast Asian cities have developed extremely rapidly and many have done so at the cost of developing a city character. Saigon might aspire to one day be as new and shiny as Singapore or Bangkok, but one of these days, Saigon will eventually be trying to set itself apart from Singapore and Bangkok. One way it can do that (architecturally, at least) is by preserving its unique French flair. I assume that Singapore and Bangkok don't have 19th century Moroccan staircases in their shopping malls or early 20th century factories converted into chic, downtown coffee shops. One of these days, in the not so distant future, these retro-buildings will be way more valuable than another sleek, modern skyscraper. 

So I say "save the old French buildings"! If not for the historical value, then at least for the commercial value!