Merdeka Bridge is a bridge across Kallang River. It is part of Nicoll Highway. It was completed in 1956 by the Public Works Department. Merdeka Bridge was named to mark the birth of the Federation of Malaya in 1957. It provided a link between the city centre and the East Coast. It was designed to have three lanes, with two lanes open to the traffic moving into the city centre in the mornings, and the flow reversed during the evening peak hour.

When the bridge was first opened, it was adorned with two stone lions sculpted by the Italian artist Rodolfo Nolli. When the bridge was widened in the 1960s, the lions were moved to nearly Kallang Park, and moved again in 1988 to the SAFTI Military Institute. [The picture of Merdeka Bridge was taken on 29 July 2010]

Traffic towards East Coast	Traffic towards city centre
Merdeka Bridge in the past	Picture taken from Times of My Life

I stayed near Merdeka Bridge when I was young. It took less than 15 minutes for me to walk there.

There were a couple of families staying by the side of the bridge. It looked like a small village. People lived in attap houses. The village was gone. It is now where the Golden Mile Complex located.

I do not miss the village, but the lions. They were our history!

There were small-scale ship-building factories at the city centre side of the Merdeka Bridge. The ships were manually built for shipping cargoes.

Today, what we can see are the high-raise buildings. [The Skypark of Marina Bay Sands]

Buildings at both

sides of Nicoll Highway