The history of Hougang in 1998 records two changes that help explain today’s Kovan: the older Hougang town centre was revamped and renamed Kovan City, and a fountain-shaped memorial well was created near Block 203 Hougang Street 21 to commemorate the village well of Tua Jia Ka. The National Library Board documents both events. For readers searching for why Kovan is called Kovan, Kovan City history, Tua Jia Ka big well, old Hougang Street 21 or the history of Hougang before its MRT stations, 1998 connects shopping-centre identity with village memory.
The important answer is that Kovan City was the renamed older town centre, not the opening of a new MRT station or a replacement for Hougang Central. Kovan MRT station would open on the North East Line in 2003. The 1998 commemorative well was also not the original working village well: it was created to remember that earlier landmark. These distinctions make 1998 a wonderful case study in how a mature neighbourhood can change its public identity while keeping clues to an older landscape.
What changed at the older Hougang town centre?
The National Library Board’s Hougang history records that the original Hougang town centre was revamped and renamed Kovan City in 1998.
The older centre had developed around the Hougang Street 21 area, where the first Hougang Bus Interchange opened in 1983 and a large supermarket-emporium was completed the same year.
By 1998, Hougang’s housing and commercial geography had become more complex. A newer centre existed at Hougang Central, while the older shopping area retained its own routines.
The renaming helped distinguish these places. It did not mean that the whole of Hougang had moved or that every nearby business opened in 1998.
A modern town often has more than one centre, and different centres can remain useful for different reasons.
Why did a different identity become useful?
Names are tools for finding and describing places. When two nearby areas have overlapping labels, it can be difficult to explain which one someone intends to visit.
A local centre with its own shops, food and travel connections benefits from a recognisable name. Kovan became associated with the older Upper Serangoon Road and Hougang Street 21 district, while Hougang Central was connected with later town-centre development.
A name is not, however, a wall. Residents may use wider or narrower meanings than a planner does, and older place names often overlap.
The 1998 renaming gives us a dated administrative and commercial milestone, not a claim that every household changed how it described home on the same day.
The return of Tua Jia Ka, the big well
NLB records that a fountain-shaped well was created in 1998 near Block 203 at Hougang Street 21, commemorating an earlier well that had stood near Block 205.
The village was known as Tua Jia Ka, a Teochew name meaning roughly “foot of the big well.” In the earlier settlement, the real well served as a practical feature and a local meeting point.
This is a striking piece of community memory. Water infrastructure that once served basic daily needs was no longer needed in its original form after the shift to modern water supply.
Yet the landmark survived as an idea. A new structure could mark the memory of a useful older place.
The commemorative fountain should not be mistaken for the original well or treated as a continuous working water source from the village era.
How a place keeps its history without keeping every building
Cities constantly replace structures. Houses and markets are redeveloped, roads change and utilities move underground. If nothing records the earlier landscape, the reasons behind old names can become hard to explain.
A memorial can connect a familiar modern address to a different historical world.
Imagine a student standing near Block 203. The surrounding HDB estate tells one story about planned public housing. The big-well memorial tells another story about village life and water use.
Neither makes the other untrue. The same place can contain information from two different centuries.
That is the special value of local heritage: it makes history observable during ordinary walks.
What stood there before the 1998 changes?
The Upper Serangoon area had been a community landscape long before the HDB plan of 1979. It included markets, places of worship, schools, farms and village settlements.
The older Hougang town centre arose during the HDB transformation. Its 1983 bus interchange and retail facilities gave residents a new focus for everyday journeys.
By the 1990s, another generation of residents knew the area primarily through supermarkets, food, bus stops and shops rather than the old village well.
The 1998 memorial deliberately drew attention to what the modern landscape had made less visible.
For the longer settlement history, see From Au-Kang to Hougang and How Water Shaped Hougang.
Kovan City and Hougang Central are different stories
National Library Board records that a newer town centre was built at Hougang Central in 1987. Hougang Plaza opened there in 1993, and Hougang Mall and Cheng San Community Library opened in 1997.
Those developments happened before the 1998 Kovan City renaming. They helped create two recognisable commercial areas within the broader Hougang system.
People sometimes assume that every building bearing the word “Hougang” belongs to one centre. That makes historical timelines confusing.
A better map labels the older Hougang Street 21 district and the newer Hougang Central separately, then shows the roads and transport that connect them.
In 1998 neither centre had an operating North East Line station. That railway arrived five years later, in 2003.
Why 1998 is not just a shopping story
It is tempting to describe an urban redevelopment year only through renovations, brand names and tenants. The village-well memorial reminds us to ask a second question: what was preserved or remembered during the change?
The answer does not need to be a surviving old building. It may be a name, an artwork, a replica or a documented oral history.
Kovan City represents a new identity for an established commercial place. The Tua Jia Ka well memorial represents a link backwards to an earlier settlement.
Together they show that commercial modernisation and historical memory can happen in the same year.
The market landscape was changing too
The former Simon Road Market, built in 1948, remained part of the district’s historical commercial geography. The National Heritage Board records that the market ceased operating in 1999.
This date is adjacent to 1998 but should not be silently moved into the year before. The official record gives 1999 for market closure.
Other landmarks, such as Teck Chye Terrace, continued to give the wider corridor a recognisable street-facing identity. These places had their own earlier histories and should not be presented as products of the 1998 Kovan City project.
For market history, read How Markets Built Hougang or the new History of Hougang | 1948 chapter.
What can a family see on a walk today?
Start with the public spaces around Hougang Street 21 and identify Block 203 and Block 205. Observe the locations of the memorial and the surrounding commercial streets.
Next, find Hougang Central on the map. Compare walking routes, bus stops, shops and the MRT connections that arrived after 1998.
Ask which objects represent earlier village history, which reflect HDB’s original new-town design and which are later adaptations.
If you have access to dated photographs from the National Archives of Singapore or family albums, compare them carefully. A modern photograph cannot tell you every previous use of a site, but it can help you form questions.
Students can use a simple three-colour map: historical village landmarks, HDB-era commercial features and post-1998 transport improvements.
A six-date chronology of Kovan and Hougang
- 1979: HDB announces a large new-town plan for Hougang.
- 1983: The first Hougang Bus Interchange opens at Hougang Street 21, and a major supermarket-emporium is completed.
- 1987: A newer Hougang town centre is developed at Hougang Central.
- 1997: Hougang Mall and Cheng San Community Library open at the newer centre.
- 1998: The older centre is revamped and renamed Kovan City; the Tua Jia Ka memorial well is created.
- 2003: The North East Line opens, with both Kovan and Hougang MRT stations serving the area.
The dates show how one larger town acquired more than one centre through successive layers of development.
Questions readers often ask about 1998 Hougang
Was Kovan City created in 1998?
The older Hougang town centre was revamped and renamed Kovan City in 1998, according to NLB. The surrounding settlement and commercial activity were older.
Is the Tua Jia Ka memorial the original village well?
No. The fountain-shaped well created in 1998 commemorates an earlier well that once stood near Block 205.
Did Kovan MRT open in 1998?
No. Kovan and Hougang MRT stations opened with the North East Line in 2003.
Was Hougang Central renamed Kovan City?
No. The name referred to the older town-centre district. Hougang Central developed as a different centre.
Keep exploring the year-by-year series
For the bus and retail roots of the older centre, visit History of Hougang | 1983. For the subsequent MRT transformation, explore History of Hougang | 2003. The wider systems explanation is in How Hougang Works.
You can travel to any other dated chapter from the History of Hougang master timeline.
The delight of 1998 is that a modern shopping name and an old village well belong in the same story. One helps people find a place today; the other helps them understand why the place has a history worth finding.
Continue the History of Hougang timeline
This chapter belongs to the History of Hougang | 1822–2026 master timeline, which organises the documented milestones alongside the wider stories of Au-Kang, schools, parks, markets, housing, transport and community heritage.