A beautiful Dutch villa in ruins

A beautiful Dutch villa in ruins

By Ida Indawati Khouw

The hinterland of Batavia was home to beautiful country
houses. Today most of the villas are gone and the remaining few,
like Groeneveld villa in East Jakarta, is in a deplorable state.
This 66th article on old and protected buildings in Jakarta
traces Groeneveld villa's history.

JAKARTA (JP): The population was sparse. The eastern
countryside was dotted with big, beautiful European villas
standing on lush green fields.

The mansions in the eastern outskirts of Batavia belonged to
Dutch colonial masters who had a taste for high-class comfort.

It is difficult to even imagine such an environ existing now
in Jakarta, where people fight for every inch of space. In fact,
if Jakartans had realized the importance of preserving historical
buildings, people would have had the chance to see the heritage.

The beauty of the villas were well-known. Visitors to the city
centuries ago extolled the Dutch villas built outside the old
city of Batavia ( present downtown Kota).

Most of the landhuis, as the Dutch called the villas, are now
neglected. Many of them are in ruins like the Tandjong Oost
mansion on Jl. Gedong in East Jakarta, right at the T-junction of
Jl. Condet Raya.

Once regarded as the most beautiful villa in Batavia, it
caught fire in 1985 and it is just a heap of rubble now. The
inside is dirty. Chicken coops are all over the place. Living in
humble houses around the ruined villa are families of officers of
the Tanjung Timur police precinct.

Catching fire

Local residents say the famous villa caught fire when a stove,
belonging to the occupants of the neglected building, exploded.

The Tandjong Oost mansion (which literally means the East
Cape) located at the present Tanjung Timur area in East Jakarta,
was so named because it was built on the east side of the cape of
the Ciliwung river. Its main building had annexes on its left and
right, connected only by a broad roof. At that time, it was
located far from the main road to Bogor but was visible from the
road.

The mansion was originally called Groeneveld (Green Field)
after the surrounding green fields but another theory has it that
it was named after Clasina Helena Coop a Groen, wife of the
estate's first owner Pieter van den Velde.

During the era of VOC (Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie, the
Dutch trading company which built Batavia), Tandjong Oost was
located far from the city center. Dutch writer V.I. van den Wall
described in his book, Batavia's het Huis Groeneveld of Tanjung
Oost (Batavia's Groeneveld House of Tandjong Oost) that to reach
the area one needed about two hours of walk from Meester
Cornelis (the present Jatinegara in East Jakarta).

It was not surprising that the rich built mansions at remote
areas in the 18th century because life in Batavia was becoming
unhealthy. Therefore the well-to-do built country houses on huge
properties on the city outskirts, safe from animals, gangs of
runaway slaves or the Dutch's enemies like the Mataram and Banten
indigenous kingdoms.

Rich people first moved to present Jl. Pangeran Jayakarta and
Ancol not far from the Kota area, later to Jl. Gunung Sahari and
Jl. Hayam Wuruk and Jl. Gajah Mada--formerly called Molenvliet.

Then people moved further to the south, even to Greater
Jakarta area of Bogor (Buitenzorg) in West Java, where the houses
sometime looked like palaces.

An English traveler noted in 1765: "The ground, for about 10
or 12 miles round Batavia is pretty well cultivated. The
gentlemen have their country houses, gardens and ponds after the
Dutch mode and must keep a numerous armed servant..."

Unique architecture

The villas had unique architectural styles as they were a
combination of Dutch, Chinese and local architecture. Van den
Wall described Groeneveld as having an ancient Dutch style.

Van den Velde, a government official, built the two-story
mansion after buying several plots of land from Ni Hoe Kong, the
exiled Chinese captain during the notorious Chinese massacre in
the old city in the 1740s, and from the Sundanese regent from
Cianjur, Aria Wiratanoe Datar, in 1742.

The owner started to build his big mansion in 1756. It
consisted of three separate buildings with the two annexes for
guests.

The building's most interesting part was its central window
which was described by van den Wall in 1932 as "most amazing with
its rich ornaments". There was also an ornamental silver shield
with the carving of a crane (bird) inside, which was the symbol
of the Craan family who once owned the estate.

"From the windows in the upper room people could enjoy the
beautiful panorama of the Ciliwung river flowing through the area
and the wide streets with big tamarind trees on its sides. There
were also ponds with flowers in the middle surrounded by green
fields," van den Wall says.

In the course of time, rooms were added at the rear end of the
mansion for female children to stay after their marriage.

Within the complex were also cannons which were fired to honor
governor generals passing through on their way to Bogor
(Buitenzorg).

Life in the hinterlands was made lively with events like sail
boat racing when all of landlords would gather.

The estate's ownership changed many times after the death of
van den Velde in 1759, not long after the building's
construction. The property was first sold to Adriaan Jubbels.
After Jubbels death in 1763, the mansion was bought by Jacobus
Johannes Craan.

Craan, the first secretary of the Batavian Society of Arts and
Sciences, improved the building and added the carvings to the
doors.

Through the marriage of one of Craan's daughters, the house
passed to Willem Vincent Helvetius van Riemsdijk, a usurer sugar
baron and also the son of Jeremias van Riemsdijk who was governor
general between 1775 and 1777. Vincent became the biggest estate
owner in Batavia but he did not take much care of the lands he
acquired.

He became rich through the tribute he demanded from the native
regents of western Java but he went too far and was finally
dismissed from government office for mismanagement.

Vincent had 14 children by his wife Catharina Craan and
another 12 from his six servants. Children borne from the
servants had reversed family name: Kijdsmeir.

A totally different personality was his son Daniel, who really
lived in this estate and rarely visited Batavia. He was a good
farmer and administered the estate well. At that time, 6,000 cows
grazed Tanjung Timur, which became a renowned dairy farm in the
1830s.

Daniel van Riemsdijk spoke better Malay than Dutch. He had
three daughters by a Malay woman called Mea. Through their oldest
daughter Dina, the house passed on to the family of her husband
Ament.

It remained in his possession until World War II changed
everything.

The building gained historical significance during the
Indonesian independence struggle when it became the headquarters
of Barisan Pelopor, an underground movement against the Japanese
occupation (1942-1945), which was led by Sukarno who later became
the first president of the country.

The group used the building between 1945 and 1946 to discuss
their plans and strategies against the Japanese troops who had
been using the estate as a warehouse.

After the first Dutch aggression in 1947 and the second
aggression in 1948, the mansion was taken over by the NICA Dutch
colonial army who turned it to a rubber plantation.

After World War II the estate was purchased by a certain Haji
Sarmili who then sold it to the Jakarta Police in 1962.