Built in 1900, the former house of Tan Teng Niah is the last surviving Chinese villa in Little India. It embodies an often overlooked story of the days when small Chinese industries operated alongside the cattle and rattan businesses at Little India. Tan Teng Niah was a towkay (Chinese businessman of good standing) who owned several sweet-making factories along Serangoon Road that used sugarcane to produce sweets. Behind the house, Tan had a rubber smoke-house for drying rubber which used the by-products of sugarcane as fuel for its furnace.