The original building which housed the V.I. in 1894 when it first opened was gutted in a blaze on July 26, 1999. This historic building in High Street (now Jalan Tun H.S. Lee) once housed the V.I. infant school and the office of the first Headmaster, Mr B. E. Shaw. After the V.I. moved to its present premises in 1929 this building housed the Technical College and then the High Street School. It was converted into the Panggung Derama in the sixties. The historic two-storey wooden building was used as a City Hall store house and as a site office for Alam Flora until the fire broke out in the evening of the 26th. Several eyewitnesses told police and firemen that they saw some suspected drug addicts leaving the building minutes before smoke was seen billowing from the premises at about 6.50 p.m. Thirty firemen from the Jalan Hang Tuah, Jalan Pudu and Jalan Pantai stations rushed to the scene and put out the fire by about 8:30 p.m. This was the first and only surviving building from the original V.I. The other buildings were demolished in the early thirties when the Klang River was straightened or in the sixties when the viaduct across the river was built. |