1889
Old photos of the Pegu Club
The main staircase and dining room at the Pegu Club in 2015 and a photo of the club in the 1910s. Once the city's most prestigious club, the Pegu Club had a billiards room, dining rooms, card rooms, reading rooms, and a well-stocked bar - it was the origin of the Pegu Club Cocktail.
Rudyard Kipling spent an evening at Pegu Club for a night in 1889 (on his way from Calcutta to San Francisco), where he met men involved in the recent annexation of Upper Burma by the British. By the time he left the club, his head was "ringing with stories of battle, murder, and sudden death" - all inspiration for his famous poem, The Road to Mandalay.
After independence, the club was used as a military audit office and dormitory for government staff, and eventually fell into disrepair. It is located on Prome (now Pyay) Road opposite the Taw Win Centre.