Gedong Tinggi Palmerah

Gedong Tinggi Palmerah ("Palmerah Tall Building") is an 18th-century Dutch Indies country house located in Jakarta, Indonesia. Currently utilized as police station, the building is among the protected colonial heritage of Indonesia. Like many others colonial country houses of Jakarta, despite its protection by the government, there is lack of interest in the study of the building and so it is slowly fell into disrepair.

Building

The building is currently located at Palmerah Barat Street Palmerah. When the building was completed in 1790, the neighborhood of Palmerah was still a forested area on the edge of Batavia. At the front of the country house if a vast garden. Today, the vast garden and the area surrounding the country house has been occupied by settlements.

Gedong Tinggi Palmerah is a 2-floored stone building. The building is built in a style known as the Transitional Dutch Indies country houses (or Nederlands-Indische stijl), a style of Dutch architecture that was found in 18th-century Indies as a transition from the Dutch style with no response to the tropical climate whatsoever, toward the complete assimilation of Javanese architecture where the house design began to respond to the tropical climate of the archipelago. The second floor of the building is built in an enclosed European style, while the ground floor is open. The eaves of the roof do not jut out generously to protect the interior from the elements, corrugated roofs were added just under the roof.

History

Gedong Tinggi Palmerah was constructed in 1790 by Andries Hartsinck. Andries Hartsinck was a high-ranking VOC official. The country house was built in a period where people began to abandon the Old Town of Batavia due to its increasingly unhealthy environment. The 18th-century saw many wealthy residents of Batavia building country houses outside the city wall in the hope that they could live free from the malaria disease plaguing the Old Town.

The establishment of the Gedong Tinggi Palmerah was the beginning of the occupation of the area of Palmerah. After Gedong Tinggi Palmerah, Palmerah station was established at the end of the 19th-century to the east of Gedong Tinggi Palmerah. The straight axis of Jalan Palmerah Barat is the main road which connects the country house and the station. Very close to Pasar Palmerah, Hartsinck also built another country house known as Djipang. Unfortunately, the country house has been destroyed in 1996.

This building is among the so-called cultural heritage of Jakarta and is protected under the STRL Monument Law 1931 no. 238 and under the supervision of the regional government of Jakarta. Despite the protection, however, the building is threatened by lack of maintenance, typical of the fate of Dutch Indies country houses in Jakarta. Some examples of destroyed country houses of Jakarta were Landhuis Pondok Gede (destroyed in the 1990s to be used as a mall), Landhuis Cengkareng (destroyed in 1980 for property business purposes), Landhuis Djipang (demolished in 1996), Landhuis Tanjung Timur (burned in 1985 after it was converted into a police dormitory, now only the ruins left). Landhuis Cililitan is still standing tall, however being converted into a police dormitory, it's just a matter time until lack of maintenance would tear apart the building.

Today, the building is located within the premise of the Palmerah subdistrict police station and partly used as police dormitory.

Cited works

• Heuken, A. (2015). Tempat-tempat Bersejarah di jakarta. Jakarta: Cipta Loka Caraka. ISBN 974-602-70395-7-5. {{cite book}}: Check |isbn= value: invalid prefix (help); Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Thamrin, Mahandis Yoanata (August 14). "Hikayat Rumah Pedesaan Petinggi VOC di Palmerah". National Geographic Indonesia. National Geographic Indonesia. Retrieved November 20, 2017. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= and |year= / |date= mismatch (help); Invalid |ref=harv (help)

See also

• Dutch Indies country house
• Rumah Cililitan Besar
• Groeneveld (estate)
• Tanjung West