Ancient archive building home to spirits?

By Ida Indawati Khouw

The 240-year-old National Archives Building had been home to a variety of wealthy Dutch families until it became the storehouse for important documents. Today, the huge building and its vast garden is home only to spirits but also on offer for lease to the public for receptions and other functions. This is the 40th article in a series about old and protected buildings in Jakarta.

JAKARTA (JP): Believe it or not, staff of the National Archives Building, locally called Gedung Arsip Nasional, still believe in ghosts.

According to its executive director, Tamalia Alisjahbana, the management has to regularly put out offerings to placate and "serve" the spirit of the house.

"It is just a tradition," Tamalia said during an interview on Tuesday at the building which is situated on the busy street of Jl. Gajah Mada in West Jakarta.

The building's management apparently recognized the spirit of the square-form mansion's first owner, Reynier de Klerk, who once served as the Dutch governor general in 1777.

The staff believe that the spirit is probably that of de Klerk, who loved his two-story country house, which initially stood on 27,000 square meters of land between the Ciliwung River at the front of the house and the Krukut River at the back.

The staff of the protected building have to regularly put a cigar and a shot of white on the table right below a big painting of de Klerk, who stands with staring eyes and curling lips on a wall of one of the second story rooms.

Previously, Tamalia said, the offerings for de Klerk's spirit were in the form of flowers and incense.

"Knowing that the spirit was of a Westerner, we then changed the offerings to cigars and wine," she said.

As if to justify their actions, Tamalia recalled several "problems" in the building before the management had begun serving the spirit.

For example, during the opening ceremony on September 1, 1998 after the building had undergone complete restoration, then state secretary Akbar Tanjung had to stop the delivery of his speech due to a short-circuit.

"The electricity power was off after a nearby electrical relay station exploded," Tamalia said.

A similar problem took place again last year when an amplifier box exploded during an event.

"A psychic said it's because of the spirit," she added.

A catalog titled Gedung Arsip Through the Ages published by the Gedung Arsip Nasional Foundation, which currently runs the building, acknowledges the presence of the ghost at the place.

It states that the spirit had often been seen in the shape of a human being. Sometimes it appeared in the form of an old man and on other occasions as a young woman.

The building itself, a typical Dutch country house of the 18th century, is decorated with elegant ornaments and oriental carvings.

In olden times, the house was located in the tranquil area called Molenvliet, home to the mansions of wealthy Dutch families.

Today, the only remaining Dutch country house still existing in the area is the National Archives Building.

In the old days, de Klerk's land reached as far as the current Duta Merlin shopping complex.

To enter the main building, visitors would first have to pass through a circling red gravel road.

Inside the building, one is welcomed by eight vast rooms, some of which are currently filled with furniture.

The strong red and gold colors on the windows and doors give the impression that the building is of a Chinese design.

Some sources said that the color of the paint was influenced by the carvings, sculpted by Chinese craftsmen and found in several parts of the building.

Each of the carvings is said to have its own meaning.

The one found on the upper part of the main entrance door depicts the symbol of hope.

Two Baroque allegorical figures, depicting Asia and Europe respectively, can be found in two separate rooms on the first floor. Asia is represented by a woman sitting on a lion with a spear in her hand, while Europe is depicted as a woman sitting on a bull with a wreath.

The top of both carvings are decorated with crowns surrounded with flowers and fish scale motifs.

"The crown may allude to the governorship of de Klerk and the fish scale motif refers to the sea as de Klerk originated from the fisherman family," author Adolf Heuken states in his book Historical Sites of Jakarta.

Experts agreed that unlike other big houses of the same era which were styled as tropical country houses, the main building is a model of closed Dutch architecture because it has no open gallery at the front or rear which were quite common in the tropics at that time.

Rows of purple Dutch tiles, a trend in the Netherlands at that time, decorate the building's entrance hall and two of the rooms.

Dutch historian Hans Bonke in his paper The Bible Style in the Arsip Nasional, said that since the 17th century it was common in Dutch houses to protect the walls of the cellar, kitchen, corridor and fire place against moisture and dirt with decorated tiles.

"The tiles in Holland followed the changing taste of buyers in Europe. In the 18th century purple decorations were added. Dutch abroad carefully followed the fashion at home," he said.

A vast garden with a row of rooms can be found in the backyard of the building, once used as the official state residence for the Dutch governor general. In the past, the rooms were used for some 150 slaves of the governor general.

"They were needed for the maintenance of the house and garden, for cooking and daily household work," the catalog on the building states.

De Klerk also had an orchestra with slaves playing violins, trumpets, castanets, flutes, horns and other instruments to entertain guests at the house.

A replica of a bell tower used to call the slaves to start or finish their work and an inscription stone from a Chinese hospital that once stood in the old city of Batavia can also be seen at the back of the garden.

The building changed ownership many times. After de Klerk died on Sept. 1, 1780, followed by his wife Sophia van Westpalm five years later, the house and the slaves were put up for sale at 19,800 rijksdaalders, according to the catalog.

Since then, ownership continued to change rapidly until the Dutch colonial government purchased the building and handed it over in 1925 to the Landsarchief (Dutch National Archive), which used it later for storing archives.

This same function was continued under the Indonesian government until 1992, when the bulky collection of archives was put in its new location on Jl. Ampera in South Jakarta.

In commemoration of the 50th anniversary of Indonesia's Independence in 1995, the Stichting Cadeau of Indonesia, a foundation in the Netherlands, spent some four million guilders restoring the building as a gift for the nation.