Ancient archive building home to spirits?

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.