The last of the Sai Ying Pun walk-ups

A short walk through the streets where the sixties survive — and why the climb is worth it.

Sai Ying Pun · 21 July 2026 · 1 min read

Between Second Street and High Street the pavement still smells of steamed rice at eleven and bleach at midnight, and above the shopfronts the walk-ups stand in their quiet rows — five storeys, no lift, laundry poles crossing the sky. Most of their neighbours have already gone to hoarding and piling rigs. The ones that remain are outnumbered, and they know it.

Inside, the sixties left things worth keeping: terrazzo poured in one morning and polished by fifty years of feet, steel window frames a millimetre thin, ceilings a hand higher than anything built since. A walk-up asks something of you — four flights, every day — and pays it back in light, in quiet, and in floors that no developer's showflat has ever managed to copy.

We keep a few of them in the collection whenever we can. They are not for everyone; that is rather the point. When one comes to us with its bones intact, we photograph it as we found it and write it plainly — because the buyers who want these homes recognise them at once, and the rest were never going to climb the stairs.