Clubhouse Harmonie now a parking lot

Clubhouse Harmonie now a parking lot

By Ida Indawati Khouw

Batavia once had the oldest clubhouse in Asia, Societeit de
Harmonie. Although the building has been demolished, its romance
still remains. This 68th article on Batavia looks into its good
old days.

JAKARTA (JP): The 1985 Jl. Majapahit road expansion project
took its toll on one of the city's remaining historical
buildings, Societeit de Harmonie.

The building, billed as Asia's oldest, has disappeared from
the city map but the area has retained its name. The Harmoni
intersection near the presidential palace in Central Jakarta is
one of Jakarta's best-known landmarks.

The name "Harmoni" was derived from the grand clubhouse
Societiet de Harmonie, a social club located right at the corner
of the present-day Jl. Veteran and Jl. Majapahit (they were
called Rijswijk and Rijswijkstraat respectively during the Dutch
colonial era) in Central Jakarta.

Those who were familiar with the white building agree that it
was beautiful. The demolition of the Empire style building had
sparked widespread condemnation.

The government expanded Jl. Majapahit as this street, which is
close to important government offices and the Kota trading
center, could no longer accommodate the increasing traffic. The
Harmoni intersection was a converging point of six streets.

The idea to build a place for social gathering for Europeans
had existed for a long time. In the 1700s the only place to
socialize was drinking houses that served various liquors.

But respectable people did not like those places; they would
rather organize dancing parties at home and hire amateur
musicians.

The first societeit or public get-together house ever built in
Batavia was at Buiten Nieuwpoorstraat, now Jl. Pintu Besar
Selatan in West Jakarta, in the early 19th century.

In 1810, Governor General Herman Willem Daendels, notorious
for his iron-gloved rules, ordered Major Schultze, who had
designed "Daendels" palace at Waterlooplein (the area where the
office of the Ministry of Finance at Lapangan Banteng in Central
Jakarta now stands), to design the grand clubhouse.

Daendels was a man who thought and acted fast. He realized
that there were no funds to build a new clubhouse. So he ordered
the Weeskamer or the Probate Court to provide a loan while the
materials were taken from dismantled walls.

In addition to providing an attractive clubhouse for
Europeans, the governor general also wanted to reduce the
influence of secret societies like the Freemasonry (see also Save
Old Batavia at The Jakarta Post's Aug. 19, 2000 edition), which
he regarded as "nests of conspiracy".

It was also part of his grand plan to relocate the
administrative center of Batavia to the southern district of
Weltevreden (now an area in Central Jakarta), said writer Scott
Merrillees.

"The construction of the clubhouse was tendered. On March 31,
1810, a contract was awarded which stipulated that the project
would cost 105,000 rijksdaalders and that the construction was to
be completed within 15 months," Merrillees said in his book
Batavia in the Nineteenth Century Photographs.

However, Daendels could not see the completion of the building
due to the political and economic turmoil at the time, which
included the French being driven out of Java after the British
attacked Batavia in Aug 1811, combined with a severe devaluation
of the currency and the subsequent difficulties in obtaining
building materials and labor. This meant that construction
couldn't be completed on schedule or in line with the budget.
Work on the project was suspended for several months.

The construction of the clubhouse was then overseen by the new
British Lieutenant-Governor of Java Thomas Stamford Raffles. The
job was again tendered with a revised construction cost of
360,000 rijksdaalders, said Merrillees.

Actually, the building was very meaningful for Indonesians, an
expert on old buildings, Adolf Heuken, said, because it was
constructed by a Malay contractor Abdul Hamied after winning the
contract. Three Chinese contractors who had also tendered for the
job, lost the bid although they were very much in demand at that
time.

" Winning the bid for the construction of the building was
very significant at that time, and Hamied's fine work lasted
almost 200 years," Heuken said, adding that it was the oldest
clubhouse in Asia.

By late 1814 the construction had been completed and on Jan.
18, 1815, the Harmonie was officially opened.

The date of the official opening of the new Harmonie clubhouse
was chosen to coincide with the official birthday of Queen
Charlotte, wife of the then British King George III.

"A grand ball and supper were held to mark the occasion. Great
festivities were no doubt enjoyed in the main rooms of the
clubhouse," Merrillees said.

But a different version was given by Heuken. He said that it
was opened in August 1814.

The building not only functioned as a clubhouse because
Raffles placed collections from the museum and library of the
Batavian Society of Arts and Science at the building's annex.

Harmonie had been the site of several historical events and of
pompous festivities of the colonial high society. G. Windsor
Earl, who visited Harmonie in the early thirties of the last
century, wrote in his book The Eastern Seas:

"The evenings in Harmonie are spent in conversation or in
playing cards and billiards, and it is perhaps more frequented by
the gentlemen, from their having little intellectual amusement at
home."

City residents who wanted to be someone in social circles had
to apply for membership and no high officials wasted such
opportunities. One of the patrons of Harmonie was the governor
general himself.

However, not all occasions which took place at Harmonie were
of the "highest levels".

In 1828 for instance, a Kermis or a Dutch-style annual fair
was held there.

Harmonie was also where the 250th anniversary of the city of
Batavia was celebrated on May 29, 1869. The Dutch captured the
city in 1619, when it was called Jayakarta, and renamed it
Batavia.

But not all that took place at Harmonie were pleasant. An
incident took place around 1870, during a monthly party where
members are permitted to be accompanied by their wives.

The party had just ended when two drunken Dutchmen arrived in
two horse-drawn carriages in the company of two indigenous
ladies.

There was a brief brawl when the younger club members, who
were still at the clubhouse after the party, tried to prevent the
two men from Buitenzorg (the present Bogor in West Java) from
entering the clubhouse.

Harmonie was also the place where indigenous Indonesians
experienced racial discrimination. Expert on old buildings
Sudarmadji Damais once recalled how his French father could not
bring his wife to drink there only because she was an indigenous
Indonesian.

The clubhouse's site is now a park and parking lot of the
State Secretariat office.

"There were no other alternative (than to demolish the
Harmonie building) to settle the traffic problem at that time,"
Damais said.