Lau Cam Soi Building

A view from our apartment on Avenida Guerra Popular looking westward in 1984. The art deco styled Lau Cam Soi building is visible as is the port in the horizon. Houses of Maputo, a most fantastic and voluminous resource on the architecture of Maputo (then Lourenço Marques) states that the building was completed in 1946.

It was envisaged for both residential and commercial purposes. Vulcan Ironworks, on the lower ground may have provided repairs and maintenance services for steam engine trains well into the mid-century. As to the name “Lau Cam Soi”, there is only the indication that it may have been owned by Chinese traders who had immigrated from Macau, another Portuguese colony of the time.