French colonial architecture
Prior to the arrival of the French, Phnom Penh comprised mainly wooden or bamboo houses with thatched roofs, constructed on stilts to protect their inhabitants from insects, reptiles, dampness and the periodic flooding which persists even today due to poor drainage.
At the heart of French urbanist plans was the segregation of Phnom Penh into quartiers, based primarily on the ethnicity of residents. These comprised a quartier Cambodgienne, a quartier Annamite, a quartier Chinoise and a quartier Européen.
The development of modern Phnom Penh began during the 1890s under the direction of architect-town planner Daniel Fabré (1850-1904).
During this period the colonial administration made various attempts to resolve the recurrent problem of flooding by filling in several small natural lakes and digging a series of interlinked canals to provide better drainage. The most important of these was the canal completed in 1894, which effectively encircled the
quartier Européen. This canal entered from the Tonle Sap, ran east to west along quai Vernéville (now Street 106) and south to north adjacent to boulevard Monsignor Miche (now Monivong Boulevard), before swinging eastwards again to exit into the Tonle Sap at the end of boulevard Charles Thomson (now France Street 47) at the site of a former bridge, the Pont de Vernéville.
Urban planning was stepped up during the 1920s. In 1925 architect and town-planner Ernest Hébrard drew up a plan for the extended urbanisation of Phnom Penh, which was published in the same year in l’Éveil économique. Thereafter the Indochina Town Planning Service (Service de l’architecture et de la urbanisme de l’Indochine, founded by Hébrard two years earlier in Hà Nội) was responsible for overseeing the systematic development and rationalisation of much of the city as it stands today.
An integral part of Hébrard’s plan was to partially fill in the canal surrounding the
quartier Européen, planting extensive public gardens which extended west to the Beng Kak Lake and extending the city to the other side of the Tonle Sap River (Chrouy Changvar peninsula). Whilst neither the gardens nor the planned extension to the Chroy Changvar peninsula were realised, Hébrard is widely credited for his achievement during this period in turning a small, Cambodian-French colonial town into a bustling, well-planned metropolis.
In the years which followed, wide boulevards were created and numerous neo-classical French style buildings were constructed. These included the
National Library (1922), the Hotel Le Royal (1929) and the
Cercle Sportif (1929, recently demolished to make way for the new US Embassy), The house of the
Résident Supérieur was sited on the riverfront adjacent to Wat Phnom, while his office (now the Ministry of Finance) was constructed nearby. Many of these colonial buildings were constructed in brick and rendered in plaster. As time went by, ferro-concrete buildings such as the Phnom Penh Railway Station (1932), the Grand Hotel d’Angkor at Siem Reap (1932) and Phnom Penh’s
art deco New Market (
Psah Thmei, 1937) became more widespread.
Today, French colonial architecture can still be seen throughout Phnom Penh and in numerous other provincial centres. Unfortunately in the recent past some fine examples have been demolished, whilst many extant examples are currently in a poor state of repair and in urgent need of restoration.
