#kyauktada

#ZawG #Kyauktada #Pansodan #ZawGArtworkz© 📷 - Galone Zilla

The Sule Pagoda Road Police Station is Kyauktada township's main police station. The building is more than 100 years old according to the station's Facebook page (!) and was once used as stables for the horses of the Mounted Police. 

The Empire Theater is one of the remaining theatres on Cinema Row, a strip of cinemas on Bogyoke Aung San Road, across the Central Railway Station. Originally built as a theatre, it was later repurposed as a cinema and is today known as the Waziya. British actor John Gielgud made an appearance in these halls as Hamlet, in 1945, when Rangoon was a "town smashed and battered to bits, with every house pitted in bullet holes", as the actor recalled later.

Throughout the colonial period, fires were a constant danger as timber remained the dominant building material. The Municipal Committee established a permanent fire brigade in 1883, and motor fire-engines were introduced in 1909. This Central Fire Station on Sule Pagoda Road was built just three years after. Its recognisable watchtower allowed for panoramic views of the otherwise flat city. The fire station is still in use today.

Adjacent to the famous Strand Hotel stands the former Bombay-Burmah Trading Corporation headquarter, now a main office of the flag carrier Myanma Airways. The origins of the trading corporation date back to the middle of the 19th century, when Scotsman William Wallace secured a license to extract timber from King Mindon. He floated the corporation in 1863 to provide the necessary capital. The company still exists to this day and is listed on the Bombay Stock Exchange. Despite its name, it has no operations in Myanmar any longer.

On a small street in Yangon's old colonial centre stands this "branch" of the Bureau of Special Investigation (BSI), one of Myanmar's many security agencies. The origins of the BSI date back to Burma's short-lived era of post-colonial democracy. Then-prime minister U Nu founded the BSI to "eradicate termites from the bureaucracy". In tandem with the myriad changes sweeping through the country, the future of these many institutions of the security apparatus is unclear.