Habaai
The former plantation Habaai, alias Welgelegen, lies on the edge of the north-western shore of the Schottegat, the area that was still known into the 19th century as the Jodenkwartier (Jewish Quarter). Landhuis Habaai is the only plantation house left in this area, which ran from the West India Company plantation Rooi Canarie to the plantation Welgelegen (Habaai). It was formerly called "het Joode Quartier" or Jodenkwartier and is now known as Schottegatweg-West.
The Jewish Quarter
After 1492 Sephardic Jews were expelled from Spain and Portugal and settled in Amsterdam and in Brazil, which was under Dutch administration for decades. When this area was reconquered by the Portuguese, the Jews fled to Curaçao, but they were not allowed to live in the city. Around 1659 they were assigned a strip of two miles along the north-western shore of the Schottegat as far as the Zwarte Berg (Black Mountain) to practise agriculture. Here the Jews had their own house of prayer, cemetery (Beth Haim) and legal system. The main plantations in the Jewish Quarter were Valentijn, De Hoop (alias Judiu, Vreugdenberg), Bleinheim (Bleijheijm, Beth Haïm, Bloemfontein), Rozentak, Heintje Kool (Heinchi or Nooyt Gedagt), Roosendaal, Gasparitu (Cattenbergh or Ma Retraite), Marchena (alias Goede Hoop, Buena Esperança, Rust en Vrede, Vrijheid) and Welgelegen, where landhuis Habaai or Welgelegen still stands. They were mostly small plantations where, among other things, tobacco and sugar were grown, but Valentijn, De Hoop, Bleinheim, Marchena and Gasparito were known above all as water suppliers to the city and to steamships.
As the Jews became more involved in business and went to live closer to the city, the houses in the Jewish Quarter were increasingly used as country residences. But around 1915 most of the plantations, including the landhuizen in this area, disappeared to make way for the oil refinery. And around 1922 part of the plantation Habaai along the Schottegat was also bought for the establishment of oil installations, which were however never realised here. Parts of the boundary walls that once ran around the plantation can still be seen here. At other locations the plantation walls have disappeared because parts of the Habaai terrain were sold.
The name Habaai
Habaai — also written Habai or Habay — is derived from Jacob Gabay Henriquez, who in August 1771 bought the plantation at an auction for 5,603 pesos for his children Moses, Isaack, Aron and Ribca Gabay Henriquez. Until 1792 Habaai remained the property of this Jewish family.
The word Gabay stands for "treasurer", "sexton" or "cantor" in the Jewish religion. Habaai was renamed by later owners Pleasant Valley (1797) and Groeneberg (1825), but the name Habaai persisted stubbornly, even in official documents.
The plantation was alternately in the possession of Jewish and Protestant owners and was finally bought in 1856 by monseigneur Kistemaker for the Catholic Church.
Country residence
Plantation Habaai was originally 105 hectares in size; a mixed plantation business was run, and in 1850 there was experimentation with cochineal cultivation: this is a cactus grown as a home for a scale insect that yielded a red dye for the textile industry.
But in 1857 only well water was sold as the yield of the plantation. A map from 1836 also still shows a salt pan at Habaai, but there is no further information about this. As a plantation business Habaai was thus not really profitable and was used above all as a country residence.
It is estimated that the landhuis must have been built around 1750. It is built in Baroque style with a façade dating from the mid-18th century. It has two storeys, galleries at the front and back and a large attic. It has been restored several times, but the original kitchen has disappeared.
Welgelegen
Nowadays we know only the area around the landhuis and the old people's home as Habaai/Welgelegen, but the former plantation formerly covered the whole area between landhuis Habaai and Plantersrust/Mundu Nobo — including the barios Santa Helena and Ser'i Dòmi — and ended at the R.C. cemetery on the Roodeweg opposite the Colon shopping centre. The cemetery was built here against the boundary wall of Habaai, and a part of it can still be seen.
A second cemetery lay roughly in line with this at the car dealer on Seri Dòmi and was cleared, when the latter was built a number of years ago, because reportedly "no important people were buried here anyway".
East of the car dealer too, at the level of the neighbourhood Panama in Otrobanda, boundary walls can be seen that point to a possible connection/overflow between the last two cemeteries mentioned, namely the one at the car dealer at Seri Dòmi and the one on the Roodeweg.
Various cemeteries
The conveyance deeds of Welgelegen from 1802 also mention "the churchyard of the free negroes and mulattoes north of plantation Cortijn of Henry Basden". This could fit another supposition, namely that Habaai did not end at the cemetery on the Roodeweg but extended further east, to landhuis Kortijn, where Pietersz Guesthouse is now located.
Graves were also to be found at various other places in the former Welgelegen, such as under the big tamarind tree at the Maria Immaculata Lyceum. These are no longer there, but are probably from before 1820, because after that year it was forbidden by law to bury the dead outside the designated locations.
Graf di Habaai (Habaai's graves) were three graves east of the Nijlweg, at the foot of Ser'i Dòmi (Fèlt Salu). Here lay Jan Hero van der Meulen, owner of Habaai in 1803, his daughter Elisabeth van Raders-van der Meulen and his grandson Constantin van Raders, whose gravestones are at the Curaçao Museum.
At the foot of the Seru Pretu near Santa Helena lay a fairly large cemetery, which unfortunately disappeared because of its location on the slope and rainfall. In recent years three graves still lay there, of a priest and the two sisters Sabelita and Simeon, who did not want to be buried in the usual burial grounds but preferred to be buried there, where they had worked for years.
Most of the sisters of Roosendaal are buried at a special location at Welgelegen, diagonally in front of the building complex at Habaai.
Road to Welgelegen (Weg naar Welgelegen)
Over the years Plantersrust also belonged to Habaai, but on sale it was always split off or added to Habaai again. The latter was the case, for example, in 1828, when Jeanette van der Meulen, owner of several shipyards in the harbour, owned both plantations.
The name "Welgelegen" lives on in "Weg naar Welgelegen", the important connecting road that has led since early times from Otrobanda to the estate Welgelegen and on to Bándabou.
Espionage and murder
On 16 February 1713 the French landed at Santa Cruz and marched towards Punda. At the plantations Welgelegen of Gaspar Isaac Touro and Plantersrust of Moses de Castro they set up a camp from which to conquer Punda. The officers stayed at Habaai and negotiated with governor Jeremias van Collen for a ransom, and on 28 March they left the island with loot of 151,860 pesos.
Ninety years later, in 1803, the English also set up their headquarters at Habaai to prepare their attack on Punda. On the instructions of local spies they knew how to land at Piscadera and also how they could reach the newly built Fort Waakzaamheid at Ser'i Dòmi. The fort at Piscadera was quickly taken for lack of gunpowder and bullets and because of the small garrison of 13 men, after which a plundering and looting expedition began in the neighbourhood of Zjaro and Seru Pretu, and finally Habaai was taken as a centre of espionage.
A bullet through the church
On 10 September 1803 lieutenant C.M. de Lange appeared with a commando at landhuis Habaai to arrest the English captain Robert Tucker, but was shot in the head by him on the steps of landhuis Habaai. De Lange died a day later; Tucker was later nevertheless arrested on his ship, and in a search at Habaai a small box of gunpowder was found as evidence of espionage activities.
The forts Waakzaamheid and De Wreker at Seri Dòmi were built in 1803 to protect the city against the English, but in 1804 the cannons of Waakzaamheid were turned by the English towards the city to bombard it. A cannonball from this clash can still be clearly seen in the wall of the Fortkerk.
Protestant ownership
Habaai was in Protestant hands for about 100 years, such as the Reverend Wigboldus Rasvelt (1751 to 1757) and the governors of Curaçao Johannes de Veer (around 1795) and Reinier Frederik Baron van Raders (around 1844).
Dòmi Wigbold Rasvelt arrived on Curaçao in 1730 and as minister had an official residence in Fòrti, Fort Amsterdam, but could barely finish his sermons "because of the corpulence of his body and the unbearable heat". Through his wife Sybrecht van Uytrecht, Rasvelt was owner of Ascencion and San Pedro, but those lay too far from the Fortkerk. So he was given an official residence in the Heerenstraat and bought Habaai around 1755 as a family home. On 1 June 1756 he asked for discharge for health reasons, and he died a year later, after 27 years of service on the island. His name still lives on in the Domineesberg (Minister's Hill), Ser'i Dòmi (85 m), which formerly belonged to Habaai and where a public-housing neighbourhood has now arisen next to the former cemetery. According to the historian M.D. Latour, the present landhuis Habaai — if it dates from 1750 — was probably built by Dòmi Rasvelt.
Catholic stronghold
Seru Pretu (Black Mountain, 135 m), one of the three brothers, west of Habaai with various transmission masts and radar posts, also owes its original name to a clergyman: the Priesterberg (Priest's Hill, 1835), after pastor Pirovano of Santa Anna, who lived there.
And Baraltwijk*, close to Dòmi on the Roodeweg, is named after monseigneur Miguel Baralt, a Venezuelan priest and political activist who had been banished by president Guzman Blanco. Mgr Baralt taught at Habaai, at St Thomas College, and also had a school of his own, the Concordia College in the Klipstraat.
The names of roads in the former plantation Welgelegen, such as Mgr. Kieckensweg, Pastoor van Koolwijkweg, Mgr. Verrietweg, Stoppelweg, Berg Dòmistraat, Frater Radulphusweg, Frater Richardusweg, Soeur Gerardaweg and Pastoor Blommerdeweg, also still recall the Catholic stronghold that the plantation once was.
Franciscan Sisters
Habaai is one of the first landhuizen on Curaçao to be given a purpose other than its original use as a plantation house.
Welgelegen came into the hands of the Roman Catholic Church around 1864. In 1842, after a sea voyage of 69 days, sister Scholastique and 5 other Franciscan sisters from Roosendaal arrived on Curaçao. In a house on Molenplein they kept a boarding school for girls from rich Curaçao and Latin American families. In 1864 the sisters bought landhuis Habaai, and in 1867 the boarding school was moved to the large building complex that the sisters built for this purpose and which was called Welgelegen. The boarding school was later also opened to non-resident local young ladies who wanted to take music or language lessons. They were sometimes brought to Welgelegen in a car with a chauffeur.
An orphanage for Antillean girls was set up in the landhuis. It later moved to the nearby convent Alverna in Welgelegen, which was also built by the sisters, and in 1924 to Santa Rosa. Alverna originally functioned as a boarding school for many girls from the other Antillean islands besides Curaçao. Because of insufficient educational facilities on their own island, they were given housing but also education at Alverna (Curaçao). The various schools at Habaai, such as the Maria Immaculata Lyceum, were also built by the sisters of Roozendaal.
After the orphanage moved to Alverna, the sisters themselves lived in the landhuis and had a nursery school, a girls' school and a school for handicapped children here.
The boarding school still existed until 1940: because people did not want to take any risks with girls of so many different nationalities, they were sent home in 1940, just before the outbreak of the war.
During WWII Habaai also served as a camp for the NT, Nederlandse Troepen (Dutch Troops), and the local Curaçao militia (schutters) were also stationed here.
In 1942 old people from Santa Catharina were brought to Habaai, handicapped children were still cared for, and for some time the landhuis was also a residence for sisters of the White-Yellow Cross.
From 1913 to 1954 hat-plaiting courses for adults were also organised continuously at Habaai. Hat plaiting was for years an important source of income for many Curaçao families and, through large-scale export, also for the island.
Sisters as large landowners
The sisters were universally respected by society for their charitable work: it was at Habaai that the sisters lived and where meetings took place and decisions were taken concerning education and social welfare on Curaçao. From Habaai, many convents, schools and care institutions have been built since early times.
The sisters were also regarded as "large landowners" because of the enormous terrain that Welgelegen formerly covered. They had their own chauffeur at their disposal, and his family later received, as a gift, a few sisters' houses that stand close to the large building complex. Directly behind it, in the border area with Marchena, there were also so-called sisters' houses that were sold to private individuals. In Baraltwijk too there are sisters' houses built in the same style as those in the Habaai/Marchena border area.
Swimming pool in the Schottegat
On the Nijlweg at Habaai the foundation of the salt-water bath still lies, laid out for the rich girls and the sisters. The Schottegat was then a clean inner water. From outside you could not see any swimming sisters or girls. The ladies descended discreetly into the water in a building that was built over the water and that had no floor in it!
Three thousand chickens
Besides the construction of convents and schools by the Roman Catholic Church, Habaai was also known for its horticultural activities and poultry farming: Pedro Casimiri, a former handyman at the vicariate, was looking for a dwelling for his family and was given the landhuis on loan on condition that he would maintain it. And so it happened. Casimiri also had ten chickens, which steadily multiplied to 3,000 chickens. Boys from the neighbouring neighbourhood Santa Helena, such as Tom Josefa, had their hands full collecting eggs at the farm. When the vicariate had new zoning plans for the landhuis, Casimiri moved with his family and the little chickens to the nearby landhuis Morgenster.
Jewish financing for a Muslim place of worship
On the border between Welgelegen and Baraltwijk, at the start of the Roodeweg, stands the Mosque. A special detail: the mosque of the Islamic community was first the home of the Catholic family of Monseigneur Ellis, financed with a loan and donation from a Jewish banking institution.
The Muslims used to meet in the house next to the mosque and opposite Plantersrust. This house had been the property of a Lebanese family since 1962: Amira Adboul el Ayubi tells that her father wanted to build a house of prayer and, in connection with this, held a collection among fellow believers. That did not have the intended result, however, and so he asked for and received a loan from the MCB bank, which also gave him 500 guilders as a donation. Ashamed that an organisation belonging to another faith had invested in their house of prayer, the Muslims now decided to contribute after all, and thus the house of Monseigneur Ellis's father could be bought. The tower was entirely financed by Rafat Dennaoui of Casa Rafaël in Suffisant.
The Muslim movement consists of three currents that normally each have their own house of prayer, but on Curaçao share one. The local Muslim community numbers 1,500 members. The official address of the mosque is Welgelegen near Habaai. (There are several neighbourhoods on Curaçao that are called Welgelegen.)
Surinamese community
After the Second World War middle-class dwellings arose in Welgelegen, built mainly for civil servants, (contract) teachers from the Netherlands and Suriname and other middle-class people.
Surinamese migrants who lived scattered across the island came and still come together at J.P.F. (Justitia, Pietas, Fides), a clubhouse built at the start of the Second World War in Welgelegen, adjoining Plantersrust.
A small part of these Surinamese families lived in the adjoining Santa Helena. So too Bos Verschuur, who was later appointed director of the Landsradiodienst. In 1952 he realised from his living room in landhuis Santa Helena the first television broadcast ever on Curaçao, with a first reception in the JPF building.
Art Gallery
In 2005 the landhuis was bought by the couple Verboom, and from 2006 to 2025 Art Gallery Alma Blou was housed here, with local and Caribbean exhibitions. Landhuis Habaai was sold in 2025.
This Habaai zone comprises the neighbourhoods Welgelegen, Habaai and Santa Helena (or Bijgelegen).
Sources
- Werkgroep Archeologie: various reports on Habaai
- B.D. van der Velden: Habaai; Habai; Habay, Welgelegen (unpublished documentation)
- R. Nooijen, Historia di Landhuis Habaai, La Union, various editions
- P. Brenneker: Sambumbu, various editions
- W. Renkema: Het plantagebedrijf op Curaçao in de 19e eeuw
- F. Metry: History of the Lebanese families in Curaçao
- Ministerie SOAW: Buurtprofiel Zone Habaai
- J. van Ditzhuijzen: Landhuizen van Curaçao
- T. Bakhuis: Kompas — video production on the history of telecommunications
Photos of landhuis Habaai, unless stated otherwise, are by Anita de Moulin, R.I.P.
With thanks to: Herman Verboom, François van der Hoeven, Fundashon Bario Santa Helena, Christel Monsanto, Jeroen Heuvel, Allan van der Ree and Unidat di bario.
*See also the pages of Baraltwijk, Santa Helena and Plantersrust.
