Aberdeen Centre (Aberdeen Square)

Aberdeen Centre was established in 1979 by Hutchison Whampoa Limited. It now is a large private housing estate in the Southern District of Hong Kong, posited at the prosperous city center of Aberdeen. Branches of various Chain stores are also located there, like McDonald's, Waston, and Japan Home Centre. In fact, it used to be the first dry dock in Hong Kong.

Dock is a kind of working platform for repairing and building vessels in the shipyard. The dry dock is the most common type in Hong Kong.

In 1857, the former Governor, John Bowring requested to build docks in Hong Kong since he was interested in its geographical advantages. In 1858, two sites in Aberdeen were then leased out. One of them was awarded to a Scottish shipbuilder, John Lamont. His name was used as the name of this dock, the Lamont Dock. It was completed in mid-1860. It started operating and servicing merchant or fishing vessels. Many small docks were closed at that time because they could not service large vessels.

In 1865, the Lamont Dock and other two docks were purchased by the Hong Kong and Whampoa Dock Company Limited. They were combined as Aberdeen Docks and then became one of the biggest docks in Hong Kong. However, in early 1960, a fire broke out between boathouses around a river mouth of Staunton Creek. So the government started conducting land reclamation again to improve people's living environment in 1965. This caused a great change in fishermen's lifestyle. The increasing cost and competitors and the urban modernization caused the fishery and shipbuilding industry to start to decline. More and more fishermen moved to the dry land.

The Aberdeen Docks was closed in 1970. To manage the population increase, it was turned into residential land, where now the Aberdeen Centre is located at.