Singapore's first public aquarium closed, rebranded twice, then came down

When Dutch businessman Karl Willem Benjamin van Kleef died in 1930 he left Singapore about $160,000 for the 'embellishment of the city'. The municipality chose an aquarium over drinking fountains or a clock tower, began building at the foot of Fort Canning in 1940, and finished after the war: the Van Kleef Aquarium opened on 8 September 1955 — Singapore's first public aquarium, with nearly 6,500 animals of roughly 180 species.

For three decades it was a fixture on River Valley Road, renovated in 1986–87 at a cost of S$750,000. Then Underwater World opened on Sentosa in 1991 with a scale the municipal aquarium could not match. The Ministry of National Development closed Van Kleef at the end of May 1991; it reopened that October as World of Aquarium under a private tenant, which folded in February 1993, and again in 1993 as the Fort Canning Aquarium.

Neither rebrand held. The aquarium closed for good in 1996, its remaining animals sold or given to other Singapore attractions, and the building was demolished in 1998 — forty-one years of public life ended by one bigger, newer rival.