Lawang Sewu
| Lawang Sewu | |
|---|---|
Lawang Sewu in 2011
|
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| Former names | Administratiegebouw Nederlands-Indische Spoorweg Maatschappij |
| General information | |
| Address | Pemuda Street |
| Town or city | Semarang |
| Country | Indonesia |
| Coordinates | 6°59′2.13″S 110°24′38.28″E / 6.9839250°S 110.4106333°E |
| Groundbreaking | 1904 |
| Completed | 1919 |
| Opened | 1907 |
| Owner | Indonesian Railways |
| Technical details | |
| Floor count | 3 |
| Design and construction | |
| Architect | C. Citroen |
| Architecture firm | J.F. Klinkhamer and B.J. Quendag |
Lawang Sewu ("Thousand Doors") is a landmark in Semarang, Central Java, Indonesia, built as the headquarters of the Dutch East Indies Railway Company. The colonial era building is famous as a haunted house, though the Semarang city government has attempted to rebrand it.
The name Lawang Sewu is from Javanese; it means "Thousand Doors". The name comes from its design, with numerous doors and arcs. The building has about 600 large windows.
The complex consists of several buildings, two main ones named A and B and two smaller ones named C and D, on Pemuda Street. The l-shaped A building faces the Tugu Muda roundabout. There are two identical towers on A building, which were originally used to store water, each with a capacity of 7,000 litres (1,800 US gal). The building features large stained-glass windows and a grand staircase in the center. There was also once an underground tunnel connecting A building to several other sites in the city, including the governor's mansion and the harbour.
The B building is located behind A building. It is three stories in height, with the first two floors consisting of offices and the third holding a ballroom. The building, with high, large windows, also has a basement floor that is kept partially flooded to serve to cool the building through evaporation.
In front of A building stands a monument to five employees killed during the Indonesian War of Independence.
Lawang Sewu was designed by Cosman Citroen, from the firm of J.F. Klinkhamer and B.J. Quendag. It was designed in New Indies Style, an academically-accepted term for Dutch Rationalism in the Indies. Similar with Dutch Rationalism, the style is the result of the attempt to develop new solutions to integrate traditional precedents (classicism) with new technological possibilities. It can be described as a transitional style between Traditionalists and the Modernists, and was strongly influenced by the design of Berlage.
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