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.