Lui Seng Chun stands on a triangular site in Mong Kok, where its curved front turns toward the meeting of streets. Built in 1931, the four-storey tong lau joined a shop at street level to family rooms above. The ground floor sold Chinese medicine; the upper floors housed the Lui family. Its architecture made the building legible from a distance, while its mixed use placed domestic life directly above the family business.
From the journal
A Family Pharmacy at the Corner of Mong Kok
A four-storey tong lau joined a family pharmacy below with a home above, then returned to medical use after careful revitalisation.
In this district · Yau Tsim Mong ↗A house on a triangular plot
Medicine and a transport enterprise
The building belonged to Lui Leung, one of the founders of the Kowloon Motor Bus Company. The Lui family’s pharmacy closed a few years after his death in 1944. The connection between a medicine shop and a bus company gives the building a place in more than one strand of Mong Kok’s history: family enterprise, street commerce and the growth of transport in Kowloon. Yet the building’s most immediate story remains in its vertical arrangement, with a working shop below and home above.
A donation and a new medical role
In 2003 the family donated Lui Seng Chun to the government for preservation. Since 2012, Hong Kong Baptist University has operated it as a Chinese medicine and healthcare centre. The reuse returns the building to a health-related role, connecting its present clinic with the family pharmacy that once occupied the ground floor. Granite columns, terrazzo exterior walls, floor tiles and the staircase remain among the preserved elements. The new institution carries medicine into the building’s next chapter while making the old family arrangement visible in its form.
A curved facade with a long memory
The curved front elevation softens the corner and draws the eye along the street. Neo-classical features meet Art Deco lines, giving the building a distinctive profile among Mong Kok’s later commercial blocks. Its materials and layout make the history concrete: the shop and household occupied one address, and a family’s business helped sustain the building across decades. Lui Seng Chun’s present use continues that medical association, while its restored architecture allows a family shophouse to remain part of the working city.