The Square Tower went up in 1879, on the site of an earlier wooden fort, and it is the oldest thing still standing on the Kuching Waterfront. Its first job was as a prison. After that it served as a fortress, and later — in one of the more cheerful reversals in Sarawak's architectural history — as a dance hall.
Its companion, the Round Tower on Jalan Tun Abang Haji Openg, followed in 1886 and was built as a dispensary before being pressed into use as a fort. Together they are the surviving pieces of the Brooke-era defensive line along the river, and both are small enough that a visitor can take them in as part of a single walk through the old town.
