Visiting the painting exhibition at The De Javasche Bank Indonesia building in Surabaya City
I had joined a city walk tour in Surabaya, and the route took me to this place for the first time. De Javasche Bank Indonesia is located at Garuda Street Number 1 Surabaya City , East Java Indonesia. But due to a condition, we could only see it from the entrance gate. Yeah this building was closed for the public for some years because of pandemic. And finally I got the short opportunity to visit this building in Surabaya Painting Exhibition Event.
If you are a explorer of new places, historical places or you are a photography antusiast, you will be impressed with the entrance of this building. There were some palm trees growing at the entrance of this building, had been growing tall and beautiful.
This building has 3 floors, on the first floor I found some machines. What I found at that time were some clearing machines and a printronix machine. The clearing system machine used as clearing in the bank, like had transactions between two or more different banks. The printronix machine type which the printing method using printer tape. The printing result would look like dots connected to each other. They used the pentium monitor to do the job, wow i felt like travelling to the old time!
Alright, let’s go to the second floor! The second floor was the office and the teller used to work. There were stairs leading to the third floor, several chambers that used for tellers to receive transactions from customers, entrace way and some old pictures of this building and other old Bank Indonesia buildings in this country. This floor was quite spacious, I’ll show you the view from this chamber then ! So unique and aesthetic. On the top, there was a very beautiful roof decoration, the bank officer told me that the roof decoration is actually heavy and made of glass, but he also didn’know how the architect could make it can hold up firmly until now.
I read from source : narasisejarah.id that, De Javasche Bank (DJB) is the oldest circulating bank in Asia. This bank tried to carry out its duties as a bank that regulates the circulation of money in the Dutch East Indies. De Javasche Bank Surabaya was officially opened on September 14, 1829, but in 1910 this building was torn down and replaced with a new building designed by a prominent architect named N.V. Architecten-ingenieursbureau Hulswit en Fermont te Weltevreden en Ed. Cuypers te Amsterdam was founded in 1910 by Eduard Cuypers (1859–1927) and Marius J. Hulswit, with A.A Fermont.
I can’t stop taking pictures. They provide 10 transaction chambers with iron bars to separate cashiers and customers.From that chambers, the customer gave their money and the teller from inside the room would receive the money to be deposited. I saw from the old photo, this spacious room used to be an office with many desks and they worked to process the transaction here.
De Javasche building is become a museum now. If there weren’t a painting exhibitions here, this building would look very spacious and there would be no stuff in the middle of the building. The entrance to this building has changed too. It has an entrance called revolving door, however this entrance is no longer in use, but is well maintained.
The next floor is the third floor which is the documentation room, but I didn’t go up there. I think the stairs are steep and I’m afraid of heights. I only visited this place because there was a painting exhibition, and there was no one guide me.
I hope the walktour will held a museum tour so that I can understand the history of this building more and not miss other things like history in this third floor. I just read some historical information there and some old photos of the building that I can understand by myself.
Okay guys, if you go to Indonesia, let’s visit Surabaya City and this museum so that your list of adventure is more complete!
