Immigration Tower, Government skyscraper in Wan Chai, Hong Kong
Immigration Tower is a government high-rise in the Wan Chai district of Hong Kong, standing 49 floors tall with an all-glass exterior. The building houses the Immigration Department along with other public administration offices responsible for identity, residency, and travel documents.
The tower opened on 22 January 1990 as Wanchai Tower II, one of three government blocks built on an 18,500-square-metre site in the Wan Chai reclamation. The Immigration Department moved in from 13 storeys it had occupied at Mirror Tower in Tsim Sha Tsui East. It took its present Chinese name in 1997 when the department was renamed at the handover.
The tower's Chinese name changed from 人民入境事務大樓 to 入境事務大樓 in 1997, when the Immigration Department itself was renamed at the handover. The department keeps a restricted vault here holding birth, death and marriage registers going back to 1873, and the oldest surviving marriage registry dates from 1945, earlier volumes having been lost in the war.
The tower connects directly to Wan Chai MTR station via a covered pedestrian bridge, so arriving without getting caught in rain or traffic is easy. Public counters are on the lower floors, and going in the morning rather than at midday generally means shorter waits.
The tower has a sky lobby on the 38th floor that acts as a transfer point for elevators serving the upper sections of the building. This layout means fewer elevator shafts need to run the full height of the building, freeing up more floor space on each level.
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