Immigration Tower

The Immigration Tower (Chinese: 入境事務大樓) is a skyscraper located in the Wan Chai District of Hong Kong completed in 1990. The tower rises 49 floors and 181 metres (594 ft) in height. The Immigration Tower, which stands as the 93rd-tallest building in Hong Kong, is composed entirely of office space. The building houses government offices, principally those of the Immigration Department.

Design

Immigration Tower is part of a three-tower complex of government offices surrounding the Gloucester Road Garden. The other two towers are the Wanchai Tower and the Revenue Tower.

These government buildings were designed by the Architectural Services Department. The building incorporates a sky lobby on the 38th storey to facilitate vertical transportation. The building is linked to Wan Chai Station by a long footbridge, and so there are entrances and lobbies at both the ground level and the first floor.

The dominant tenant is the Immigration Department, and the building is heavily visited by members of the public who rely on the department for the issuance of Hong Kong Identity Cards and all types of visa. The lowest levels of the tower are thus served by escalators in order to accommodate the high patronage of the services found there. The Immigration Department maintains several unique facilities in the building. A restricted vault holds a collection of volumes dating back to 1873 which records in detail the births and deaths over the years, including information such as the occupation of new fathers or the causes of deaths. The oldest extant marriage registry is from 1945, as earlier volumes were lost during World War II. The department also maintains a small detention facility on the 13th floor.