Who built Raffles Hotel?
Jul 14, 09 | 1:57 am Books and newspaper articles have routinely attributed the building of the historical Raffles Hotel in Singapore to the Armenian Sarkies brothers. But now a descendent of the prominent Alsagoff family has come out to say that the records are wrong. Syed Muhammad Ghadaffi Alsagoff, 35, wants to set the record straight: He says it was his great-great-great grandfather Syed Ahmed who bought Beach House at No. 1 Beach Road in 1870, before it was converted to the Raffles Hotel. His great-great grandfather Syed Mohamed Alsagoff then took over the estate and expanded it in 1889. “It is true that the Sarkies brothers managed the hotel under a lease from Syed Mohamed Alsagoff. But the Sarkies brothers did not expand the construction of what was originally a 10-room beach house into one of the first modern buildings with electricity in Singapore,” Syed Ghadaffi told The Sunday Times. “What is not commonly known is that its construction was undertaken by Syed Mohamed Alsagoff
