The Edinburgh Place Ferry Pier was the third generation of the Star Ferry Pier in Central, built in 1957 at the height of the Modern Movement. Its clock tower was visible from the water and served as a navigational landmark for commuters crossing Victoria Harbour on the Star Ferry's green-and-white double-decked vessels. The pier stood near the City Hall and the General Post Office, embedded in the civic fabric of Central. For generations of Hong Kong residents, the sight of the clock tower from the upper deck of the ferry was part of the grammar of daily life — the signal that you were arriving or departing, that the working day was beginning or ending.

The push to demolish the pier had been building for years before the final order came. Plans to relocate the Central Ferry Piers date to July 1999, when proposed amendments to the Central District (Extension) Outline Zoning Plan for the Central Reclamation III area were published. The scheme called for demolishing both the Star Ferry Pier and the nearby Queen's Pier, reclaiming 16 hectares of harbour, and building a six-lane road and a low-rise shopping centre in their place, at an estimated cost of HK$3.5 billion. An impact assessment in 2001 recommended relocation, and the Antiquities Advisory Board approved it in 2002. The Legislative Council passed a nonbinding motion urging the government to retain the pier and clock tower. The government ignored it.

The pier was decommissioned on 12 November 2006. Demolition was scheduled for early 2007, then moved forward to December. The demolition crew erected scaffolding on 6 December, and work began on the 12th. Protesters occupied the site, then retreated, then returned. The confrontation grew sharp enough that police intervention was threatened. Consultants who had prepared the 2001 Environmental Impact Assessment noted the pier's significant role in Hong Kong's transport history, but that recognition carried no legal weight. The clock tower, the detail protesters fought hardest to save, came down with the rest.

The Edinburgh Place Ferry Pier is gone. Its successor, the fourth-generation Star Ferry Pier, now serves the same harbour crossing from a different spot on the reclaimed waterfront. But the fight over its demolition left a mark on Hong Kong's heritage landscape that persists. The controversy accelerated public and governmental attention to the city's historical buildings, contributing to reforms in how heritage assessments are conducted and how communities can engage with decisions about demolition. The pier became a symbol of something difficult to articulate but widely felt: that in a city that changes as fast as Hong Kong, some things are lost before anyone has fully reckoned with their value. The debate it sparked has never entirely ended.