The two streets with its canal, the Batang Hari (formerly the Molenvliet), connect Glodok and Kota Tua Jakarta to the north with Harmoni Junction to the south.

Completed in late 1640s, the canal-street Gajah Mada and Hayam Wuruk is Jakarta's oldest major thoroughfare.

[2] The canal was built to drain water from the surrounding swamps south of Batavia as well as providing easier means of transporting goods.

Construction was led by Phoa Beng Gan, Kapitein der Chinezen, the government-appointed Chinese headman of Batavia from 1645 to 1663.

[4] The point where the Molenvliet starts at north was the result of the extension of the Nieuwepoortstraat (now Jalan Pintu Besar Selatan).

This new road, initially named Bingams gracht, became known as the Molenvliet West, the precursor of Jalan Gajah Mada.

The street extends far south until a point where Molenvliet makes a turn toward the east to feed on the southern portion of the Ciliwung.

Drawings from the second half of the 18th-century show many summer houses with elaborate gardens were built along the Molenvliet West, e.g. the grand residence of Reynier de Klerck which is now the old National Archives Building and Candra Naya, residence of Khouw Tian Sek, later Luitenant der Chinezen ('Lieutenant of the Chinese').

In the late eighteenth and the early nineteenth century, the Chinese-born merchant Khouw Tjoen and his son, Lieutenant Khouw Tian Sek, began to acquire a great deal of land along the Molenvliet, then still a semi-rural suburb of Batavia.

[6][7] Fortunately for the Lieutenant, the southwards urban expansion of Batavia in the early nineteenth century meant that '[t]his [area]...increased so enormously in value that without further effort on...[his] part he was changed from a comparatively well-to-do into an exceedingly wealthy man.