Where did Lee Kuan Yew grow up and live?

📍Oxley Road, Singapore

1923 – 2015

“I was born Lee Kuan Yew on the 16th of September 1923 in Singapore, the son of a Hakka Chinese family that had been in Singapore for four generations. I studied law at Cambridge, returned to Singapore, co-founded the People's Action Party, and led Singapore to independence — first from Britain, then involuntarily from Malaysia in 1965. I was the founding Prime Minister and governed for thirty-one years. I turned a city with no natural resources, no hinterland, and no obvious reason to exist into one of the wealthiest and best-governed states in the world. The price was political control — Singapore's press freedom and political opposition were severely constrained. Whether the trade-off was worth it is a question that different people answer differently. The Oxley Road house where I lived and died was the address of modern Singapore.”

👍 LovedThe transformation of Singapore from a colonial backwater into a global city. The extraordinary efficiency and cleanliness and safety of what we built. The Oxley Road house as the centre of a life entirely devoted to one city.

👎 DislikedThe political control that constrained press freedom and opposition. The expulsion from Malaysia that was a humiliation I turned into a founding myth. The question of what Singapore becomes after the founding generation.

Map showing where Lee Kuan Yew lived — Oxley Road, Singapore

🗺️ Approximate location today

📷 Location image · via Wikimedia Commons

Sources: Lee, K.Y. The Singapore Story: Memoirs of Lee Kuan Yew (1998), Times Editions; Mauzy, D. & Milne, R. Singapore Politics Under the People's Action Party (2002), Routledge