Douglas Street, Hong Kong
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Douglas Street | |||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 A view of Douglas Street from the harbourfront area in November 2012. | |||||||||||||
| Traditional Chinese | 德忌利士街 | ||||||||||||
| Simplified Chinese | 德忌利士街 | ||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||
Douglas Street (Chinese: 德忌利士街) is a pedestrianised street in Central, Hong Kong. It runs north-south from Connaught Road Central to Des Voeux Road Central, and ends at its intersection with Des Voeux Road Central, though the street name is continued in Douglas Lane which continues almost all the way to Queen's Road Central before curving and converging with Li Yuen Street East.[1]
The street is named after Hong Kong tai-pan Douglas Lapraik, whose dockyard was once located in the area now reclaimed and the site of Exchange Square.[2][3][4] Douglas Street has been dubbed as a Hawker Blackspot for Central and Western District, meaning that the Food and Environmental Hygiene Department would give no warning to hawkers at the location before taking prosecution actions against them if they are caught.[5]
In the 1990s, the street was permanently closed to traffic in order to make way for an entrance to the Central Subway, a tunnel connecting Central and Hong Kong stations of the Mass Transit Railway (MTR). The street closure was gazetted on 18 November 1994.[6]