The first Star Ferry pier on the Hong Kong Island side opened in 1890, a simple wooden shelter at the junction of Pedder Street and Chater Road. A decade later, a temporary pier off Ice House Street took over while the permanent replacement was arranged, and in 1912 the second-generation pier opened at the same Ice House Street location — opposite the site that is now Jardine House. That pier served the crossing for nearly half a century. Then, in the late 1950s, a major land reclamation reshaped Central's waterfront and made space for something grander. The third-generation pier opened in 1957, near Edinburgh Place, in the Streamline Moderne style — a mode of architecture that expressed speed, flow, and optimism in curved surfaces and horizontal lines. It was designed by Hung Yip Chan, a local Chinese architect who had joined the government's Architectural Office in 1952; the Chief Architect Michael Wright added a clock tower to give the building scale and practicality. The result was modest but genuinely loved.

On 11 November 2006, the third-generation pier was decommissioned. Its demolition was not quietly accepted. The Edinburgh Place pier had become one of the most recognized structures in Hong Kong, its clock tower and curved facade familiar to generations of commuters and visitors. When the government announced it would be torn down as part of the Central and Wan Chai Reclamation project, the response was one of the largest public protests over heritage conservation in Hong Kong's history. Demonstrators occupied the pier, calling for it to be preserved in place or relocated. The government did not relent. The pier came down, its clock tower bell preserved — though the government later abandoned its pledge to install the original historic features in the rebuilt clock tower, a gesture of continuity that many found insufficient. The episode crystallized a broader debate about Hong Kong's relationship with its built heritage, a debate that has not been fully resolved.

The current pier — the fourth generation — opened on 12 November 2006, the day after the third closed. It is also known as Central Ferry Piers 7 and 8, located on Man Kwong Street, roughly 300 metres further into the harbour than its predecessor. The design takes an explicitly nostalgic approach: a mock-Edwardian terminal, approximately 600 square metres, with a clock tower fitted with five electronically controlled bells tuned to approximate the sound of the old Edinburgh Place pier's bells. Critics were not persuaded. The new structure has been described as "an imitation of the past without capturing the spirit of the past or present" and derided as having a theme-park quality — a replica of a memory rather than an original form. Pier 8 was subsequently converted and now houses the Hong Kong Maritime Museum. Pier 7 alone still serves the Star Ferry.

For all the architectural controversy, what persists is the crossing itself. Victoria Harbour is roughly 1.9km wide between Central and Tsim Sha Tsui, and the ferry covers it in about eight minutes. On the upper deck, which costs marginally more, you sit above the water line with unobstructed views of the Hong Kong Island skyline to the south and the Kowloon hills to the north. The skyline changes constantly — new towers rise, old ones are surrounded — but the water, the movement, and the quality of light over the harbour at dusk remain stubbornly themselves. People have been making this crossing since 1888, when the Star Ferry Company was founded. The pier has changed four times. The harbour has not.