roadTha Phae Road

ถนนท่าแพ · Thanon Tha Phae

One kilometre from the river to the gate, on the line the founders drew.

Caspar · CC BY-SA 2.5

from Nawarat Bridge to Tha Phae Gate

18.7875, 98.9985 · OpenStreetMap · The map

What it is

From the Nawarat Bridge past Wat Upakut to Tha Phae Gate, about a kilometre, on the east–west axis laid out at the founding. The land outside the gate was Ban Chiang Rueak, a trading village.

The long version

Photographs of 1877 show raft-style wooden houses along it; by 2001 one was left. In 1889–90 Chinese merchants from the east bank put up masonry shophouses; the railway's arrival in 1921 made it the commercial street, and most of the surviving heritage houses date from then. After 1962 came commercial blocks of every height. The cables went underground in 2004, which is when the walking street moved off it to Ratchadamnoen.

In October 2024 the Ping came over the bank and the road flooded from the bridge to the Krung Thai bank.

Inference — Tha Phae is the one street in the city whose whole biography is on record, and it reads as a list of things arriving from the east: the river trade, the Chinese, the train, the water.

Connected to

• Tha Phae Gate Its head.
• Nawarat Bridge Its foot.
• Chiang Mai railway station What made it the commercial street.
• The walking street, and how a road becomes a floor Began here in 2002.

Named here by

• Tha Phae Gate The road it names.
• Nawarat Bridge What it carries.
• The 1931 city map Its spine.
• The day the river came up Tha Phae Under water.
• Chiang Mai railway station What the train did to it.

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