Hotel des Indes (Batavia)

However the boarding school was soon abandoned because due to the lack of European females in the Dutch East Indies its teachers kept leaving to get married.

Ocean travelers in the 19th century arriving in the port of Batavia were taken to shore with small boats and dropped off at the "Kleine Boom" customs office.

In 1869, British anthropologist Alfred Russel Wallace described the hotel's accommodation as: "The Hôtel des Indes was very comfortable, each visitor having a sitting-room and bedroom opening on a verandah, where he can take his morning coffee and afternoon tea.

In the centre of the quadrangle is a building containing a number of marble baths always ready for use; and there is an excellent table d'hôte breakfast at ten, and dinner at six, for all which there is a moderate charge per day.

During the economic depression in 1897, Lugt founded the "s.a. Hotel Des Indes" to avert financial liability in case of a potential bankruptcy.

Only the general chief of service, who was held in high esteem by the indigenous staff, was considered indispensable, until a Japanese hotelier took charge.

[5] After the Japanese capitulation in 1945, the office of the Recovery of Allied Prisoners of War and Internees (RAPWI) took over the hotel and made it a safe haven for returning European refugees.

On 7 May 1949, the hotel was the historic location of the Roem–van Roijen Agreement that led to the release of Sukarno and Mohammad Hatta and eventually the Dutch transfer of sovereignty to the Indonesian Republic.

In the early 1950s, the hotel remained a central institution for the Djakarta elite, hosting prominent events including dinners, receptions and fashion shows.

A description of women arriving for a “mode-show” (fashion show) the featured both Western and Indonesian fashions, from the national women’s magazine Wanita in August 1950, translated from the Indonesian original written by S. Pudjo Samadi, captures the magic of the space: “The lights shone bright in the room at the top of the Hotel des Indes, the hotel that has been called the gateway to the island of Java.