The Stories Hidden in Medan Pasar

ALEX BRIGGS| 27 September 2026

IT is easy to walk through Kuala Lumpur’s historic centre without giving much thought to Medan Pasar. Tucked between Masjid Jamek and Pasar Seni, the Old Market Square today feels like a quiet pocket of the city – a green open space with a children’s playground and an ornate clock tower. Yet this unassuming square has witnessed some of the defining chapters in Kuala Lumpur’s history, and its buildings and businesses still hold clues to the people who helped shape the city.

Some may know that it was once the site of Yap Ah Loy’s home, as well as the old market that was central to KL’s founding. However, it is far more than that. Over the past two years, one man has made it his mission to discover the secrets and stories behind the square: architect and academic Robert Powell, who has reported his findings in his latest book, Medan Pasar: The Old Market Square of Kuala Lumpur, which is about to be released in bookstores.

Architect and historian Robert Powell’s new book uncovers the people, businesses and forgotten histories woven into one of Kuala Lumpur’s oldest public spaces.

Powell started his career as an architect and town planner in the United Kingdom before becoming an academic and Associate Professor in Urban Design at the National University of Singapore, where he spent over 18 years. Since then, he has worked at Taylor’s University in Subang, becoming more entrenched in local South-East Asian culture.

He says the idea for the book first came about when walking through Medan Pasar with Creador Foundation husband-and-wife co-founders Brahmal Vasudevan and Shanthi Kandiah.

“We passed the old shop house No 2, Medan Pasar and Shanti turned to her husband and said, ‘I think we should buy that,’ which is a strange thing to say, but they saw it was going into decline and they were interested in it for its historical value. We started the book Origin and Evolution of The Malayan Shop House, about a particular coffee house. Later on Brahmal said they became interested in actually conserving the whole square and asked me to start a new book on the subject.”

The Creador Foundation did indeed buy and begin revitalisation efforts on Medan Pasar, with the area now hidden behind construction boards awaiting its transformation. In 2024, Powell began working on the book to coincide with the reconstruction plans.

When asked about researching and writing the book, Powell lit up, describing the process as going down a rabbit hole: taking a simple building block, or row of shops, and diving into layers of history, tracing ownership and lineages back centuries.

He started by looking at the age-old question of who truly founded Kuala Lumpur and took particular interest in Raja Abdullah bin Raja Jaffa, a nobleman from Selangor of Bugis descent, deciding to look into his origins. This meant not only digging into national archives and translating centuries-old Jawi documents, but even flying to Sulawesi in Indonesia, where the Bugis originated.

“I started the investigation by going to Ujung Pandang, or presently it’s Makassar. It’s in the kingdom of Luwu in Indonesia. I learned the whole story of the Dutch East India Company pushing the aristocrats of Luwu out of Sulawesi. They headed towards mainland Malaya and eventually came to rule the kingdom of Selangor.”

“Then I traced how the third sultan of Selangor, Sultan Ibrahim’sdaughter married this young man from Luwu, Raja Abdullah. Then the next sultan gave the Klang Valley to Raja Abdullah. It was part of a long line of incidents that brought us to Me dan Pasar, there’s an unbroken timeline that connects the Bugis rulers of Luwu from Sulawesi to the Klang Valley. That’s my starting point.”

From there, several events that shaped KL passed through Medan Pasar: the miners sent in search of tin, the Klang War that burnt the city to the ground, and the many people who built the foundations of Kuala Lumpur and lived among its walls.

For Powell, Medan Pasar offers a window into the many communities and individuals who contributed to the growth of Kuala Lumpur. Its history reflects the movement of people from across the region and beyond, bringing with them their businesses, skills, traditions and cultures, and helping to shape the city that grew around the square.

Medan Pasar today, with construction underway as the historic square takes shape for a new chapter in Kuala Lumpur’s evolving cityscape.

For example, he found that one of the oldest communities in the area were Tamil Muslims from Tamil Nadu, India. This includes the oldest still-running business in Medan Pasar, the pharmacy M.S. Ally, whose founders first came to Malaya in 1908. There are many more whose stories are woven into the tapestry of the marketplace. And of course, Powell flew out to India to verify these connections himself.

“I went to Tamil Nadu to find out anything I could about the migrants. There was one that came from Kothanallu and set up a business at the south end of the square. I tried for months to find out where they’d gone. The business is actually still running out of Singapore and India, so there’s still a connection. I also talked to a gentleman who was a descendant of money lenders from Chettinad.”

For Powell, it was important to find each of these individual accounts. It builds a greater picture, allowing them to envision a time past, but also providing an incentive to dig even deeper.

“It’s building up a story of people who came. The Chettinads are still there in Lorong Ampang. You can find shophouses there, two of them, which are still laid out like the money lenders of yesteryear, although the money lenders don’t operate there any longer. However, there are signs above the door which tell you their name. These are little surprises that keep one going.”

Even the famous Market Square clock tower – a fascinating example of 1930s South-East Asian Art Deco architecture – has its own hidden secrets. While it was said to have been made to commemorate the coronation of King George VI, Powell decided to take a look for himself and soon found his way under the main tower, discovering the dark depths below.

“About three months ago, we opened the doors and found a subterranean chamber beneath. There’s a steel ladder going down into a basement and a rusted cover on it. We couldn’t move it, but you can point a torch down there and you can see it’s full of water. We also found a metal tag on some of the machinery which seemed to suggest it was a transformer for a substation, which reduced the 400 kVA voltage to 40 kVA for use in the buildings surrounding the square.”

He would go on to say that an old newspaper cutting noted that the chairman of the sanitary board at the time was surprised to learn it was going to be a commemorative work. So it’s possible that the iconic clock tower overlooking the square may not have been made to celebrate a king, but to cover up an unsightly substation so it wouldn’t be an eyesore in the middle of the square.

When asked what drew him to South-East Asian culture, to the point of living, studying and even marrying a Malaysian, Powell said it was the beauty of the architecture and the vast amount of history that is yet to be explored. As a writer, he feels there’s always more to admire and enjoy.

Regarding revitalisation efforts at Medan Pasar, Powell welcomed them, saying that while the city may keep changing, we should take care of the past, noting how many older buildings and other facilities are knocked down in the name of development.

“I think the answer would be to handle the past lightly, delicately,” says Powell. “It’s fragile, and you can destroy something by moving too fast. It’s too easy to knock it down and put something, you know, a high-rise building on the site. So I think what’s happening in Medan Pasar, it’s quite a vital bit of history, recollections of the past of this city. It’s a young city [KL], it’s only 170-odd years old and it should be handled delicately.”

Medan Pasar offers a particularly vivid example of why Kuala Lumpur’s historic core matters. Its buildings, businesses and public spaces hold layers of stories about the people who came to the city, built livelihoods and shaped its identity – stories that continue to inform how the city is understood today. As Kuala Lumpur evolves, places such as Medan Pasar offer an opportunity to preserve those connections while allowing the historic centre to remain a living, active part of the city.

Discover the stories behind Medan Pasar with Robert Powell

Even in his 80s, historian and author Robert Powell speaks about old Kuala Lumpur with the curiosity and excitement of an explorer. His latest book, Medan Pasar: The Old Market Square of Kuala Lumpur, uncovers the stories, people and places that shaped one of the city’s most historic squares.

Meet Powell at the official book launch on Oct 10 at 2.30pm at The Crave @ The Toffee, Jalan Raja Chulan, Kuala Lumpur, and join him on a journey from India to Indonesia, through coffee houses and clock towers, to discover how these stories came together in a single square.

RSVP: forms.gle/TfHraDPrFz1Z2z286