Brickfields, a place of many things – home to authentic Indian food; shopping haven for colourful sarees and the city’s foremost transport hub, KL Sentral. The charm of Brickfields is the perfect premise for the compromise of a modern Kuala Lumpur, proud of its rich heritage yet looking outwards and onwards.
Brickfields is “that place of many things” – center for all things Indian for Kuala Lumpur; home to multi-religion places of worship; popular blind massage spot; shopping haven and the city’s foremost transport hub.
KL Sentral has changed the centrally located Brickfields into a more commercial, high-end district in the last decade. With the recent openings of the NuSentral mall, SHELL corporate HQ, five star hotels and residences, now you can only see traces of the time when the name Brickfields was synonymous to a rougher part of town.
The chaotic Jalan Tun Sambanthan bifurcates the old and the new Brickfields, with aromatic restaurants, colourful saree shops, and lavish gold jewellers on one side, and the gleaming new mall and office towers on the other.
Brickfields is literally the building blocks of Kuala Lumpur, referring to its history where the first bricks kiln was built for the construction of the city.
Previously known as Batu Limablas, it was a sleepy wooden thatched township. A fire and a flood destroyed it in 1881. The British Resident General, Sir Frank Swettenham, instructed all new buildings should be built of brick. Kapitan Yap Ah Loy established a kiln and supplied bricks to all new constructions, revolutionising the architecture of Kuala Lumpur.
Then the Malayan Railways opened a locomotive depot and built staff quarters in Brickfields, bringing workers from the Sub-Continent. The old quarters (The Hundred Quarters, built in 1905) can still be found on Jalan Rozario, about 2km down the road from the century old Kuala Lumpur Railway Station.
The Brickfields communities grew over the years, and with it came the religious/cultural medley that sculpts the area into what it is today. In just one stretch of road, you can find the Sri Lankan Hindu Temple, Sri Kandaswamy, the Buddhist Temple Maha Vihara, the Zion Lutheran Church, the Vivekenanda Ashram, the St. Mary’s Syrian Orthodox Church, and Surau Madrasathul Gouthiyyah.
Today, Brickfields continues to be a place of many characters. Just beside the river is the Malaysian Association for the Blind, which gives academic and trade skills training to the visually impaired, and is the reason why Brickfields is renowned for its blind masseurs.
The charm of Brickfields is the perfect premise for the compromise of a modern Kuala Lumpur, proud of its rich heritage yet looking outwards and onwards.
