Koningsplein – Rais.cw

"…. even if it were only half as large as the Koningsplein" is a fragment from the request of Gerard Lulss to the West India Company to be allowed to receive a piece of agricultural land. According to Father Nooyen, who has studied the history of the Ruiterkwartier, this was the first time the name "Koningsplein" was mentioned.

The present location of the elevated Koningsplein, or "Koningsplijn", has according to him a special historical significance because it was from here that the colonisation of the island by the Dutch began: Van Walbeeck and his men landed in 1634 at this spot east of the Schottegat and moved from here along what would later become Pos Kabai and Bever further "inland".

Nooyen may well be right: during the construction of the Dock Company a brick slipway was come across, an installation over which ships are launched. It was covered with Delft-blue tiles and was probably used for ship repair for a long time after 1634.

Plantation Koningsplein was probably already laid out in the 17th century; the plantation house dates in any case from 1650. It belonged to the smaller plantations in the middle division — 35 hectares — and was in the possession of the West India Company. Koningsplein also included the "Eilandje Koningsplein" (Little Island Koningsplein) or Schapeneiland (Sheep Island), on which the Curaçao Dock Company is now built. Earlier there were also plans to build the leper asylum and later a seamen's home on the island. South of Koningsplein lay the Isla di Meeuwchi, the gull island.

Peanuts and ferries

The director of the West India Company, Jonathan van Beuningen, was around 1717 the owner of Koningsplein. According to Nooyen he thought up that peanuts might serve as food for enslaved people and as provisions on board ships. And so in that year the first peanuts on Curaçao were sown on the estate of Koningsplein. Not much farming was ever done at Koningsplein, although around 1720 the plantation came into the hands of Jan Evertsz, belonging to the well-known family of riders who were also planters. Since 1763 it was bought by successive Jewish families, and some small livestock and cows were kept here. But Koningsplein was above all a water plantation: Izaak Pinedo, around 1877 owner of the plantation, placed advertisements praising the pure drinking water of his plantation and stating that as a supplier to the garrison he had never received complaints about the quality. There were several wells, and to the right in front of the plantation house at Koningsplein stood a large rain tank that conveyed the water via a pipe to the waterfront. There it was, until early in the 20th century, loaded onto wooden pontjes (small ferries/barges) and transported to Scharloo.

Yerba Bragas

At Scharloo also lived the Maal family, well-known planters and owners of the plantations Fuik, Oranjeberg, Oostpunt, Duivelsklip and Klein Sint Joris. In 1885 they bought Koningsplein, which was used more as a weekend house and for parties. There was still some small livestock, and there were 3 corrals with sheep that also grazed on the Schapeneiland named after them. During dry periods Maal also had horses and cows brought over from their plantations in the east of the island to graze on the Schapeneiland, where a special kind of grass, the Yerba Bragas, grew in abundance. According to Arnoldo's pocket flora, 3 kinds of brackish grass grow on Curaçao, namely the brakgras marga, the brakgras salu, and the brakgras dushi. From the brakgras dushi an infusion was made which, mixed with water, was drunk against inflammation (pa freska i baha inflamashon).

Sheep, cows and horses later made way for the installations of a dry dock of the oil refinery. The Schapeneiland was in 1941 in fact connected to the mainland, when the refinery bought it together with plantation Koningsplein — a total of 41 hectares — for 45,000 guilders. The purchase transaction in 1923 was, however, not between the Maal family and Shell, as is generally assumed.

Bad buy

According to Nooyen, on 15 December 1923 Corneille Willemszoon Jonkheer bought from the Maal family the plantation "with the buildings of dwellings, warehouses and privilege of sheep corrals, situated in the Ruiterkwartier, for 35,000 florin". On 21 December of that same year Jonkheer sold it to the oil company, which at that time was buying up various plantations on the Schottegat in order to obtain water and to establish its installations. The oil giant counted out 45,000 florin for Koningsplein…

The plantation proved afterwards to be a bad buy, and Shell tried in vain to swap it for a terrain near Valentijn where its installations stood. It did build in 1948 at Koningsplein a processing plant for asphalt from the asphalt lake, in order to obtain cheaper fuel for ships and for the refinery at Pernis, but due to a decline in demand the plant was definitively closed in 1952. The Schapeneiland was also once used as a temporary storage place for the pipes of the pipeline that was laid from Asiento to Caracasbaai.

Family with many children

So as not to leave the plantation house empty, staff members were regularly allowed to live here, such as the last resident, the guard commander Hendrik Smeins. He was allowed by the Shell director, D. van Nijmegen Schonegevel*, to live at Koningsplein from 1936, which certainly offered enough room for the family with 24 children. Koningsplein was then no longer a water plantation; water even had to be brought in because the large rain tank stood dry. Smeins did continue the small livestock farm until he left for the Netherlands with his wife in 1979.

Earlier, Willem de Windt, who had been involved in the Battle of Waterloo (1815), also lived at Koningsplein. He had settled here with his family, and the family, after having lived at Koningsplein, also owned, among others, the areas now known as Sun Valley (formerly called Waterloo!), Rancho, Suffisant and the plantations Noordkant and Rooi Canarie. The little cemetery of the De Windt family can still be seen at the entrance of Sun Valley.

New harbour

Because Shell was not using Koningsplein anyway, in 1952 the government asked for and received a piece of terrain for the construction of the Nieuwe Haven (New Harbour) and for industrial development. From then on the face of Koningsplein changed completely: in 1954 the Nieuwe Haven was completed, built on two small islands between Saliña Abou and Parera: the first is Isla di Briem, later a small peninsula, where in 1960 the Amstel factory was built. It was earlier also called Isla di Oroplano, aeroplane or SCADTA island, after a base that had been built here. SCADTA (Sociedad Colombo-Alemana de Transportes Aéreos) was a Colombian company that used Curaçao as a hub for its commercial flights. It is the forerunner of Avianca.

The first SCADTA flight to Curaçao took place in 1925 with a seaplane, according to the Museo Aeronautiko of Mr Cedric Bronswinkel. Lindbergh too once landed on the SCADTA island, which also explains the names Lindberghweg and Fokkerweg in the surroundings: it has to do with this little airfield.

This little peninsula was in 2025 still used for the storage of the enormous parts of the wind turbines for the wind farm at Koraal Tabak.

Briem is furthermore a residential neighbourhood south of the Nieuwe Havenweg that was formerly also called Lescht den Dorst ("Quench the Thirst"). Formerly the water stood up to the houses, and many Pancho Briem, a species of fish, were caught there in canisters. The other island, Isla Pabou, lies west of Isla di Briem.

Economic developments

The construction of the Nieuwe Haven around 1960 involved about 20 million guilders. It became the first four-lane "motorway" on Curaçao, later called the Rijkseenheidboulevard or Emancipatieboulevard, after the autonomy monument that stands at the beginning of the boulevard. This consists of 6 birds flying out, symbolising the islands of the Netherlands Antilles. The author J. Hartog tells that this is a design by the architect J. Fresco, who lived on Curaçao, and the Public Works Department. The unveiling took place on 19 October 1955 by Queen Juliana, and the edge inscription is taken from a fragment of her speech: "Steunend op eigen kracht doch met de wil elkander bij te staan" ("Relying on our own strength, yet with the will to assist one another").

The Emancipatieboulevard is nowadays called Dominico "Don" F. Martina Boulevard, after the former prime minister of the Netherlands Antilles. Thanks to the boulevard, one no longer has to drive from the city around the Schottegat to reach Groot Kwartier.

In 1968 the theatre Centro Pro Arte was completed on the border between Koningsplein and Pos Cabai, and in 1971 the building of the trade union centre, the SSK. Plantation house Koningsplein is now surrounded by the Curaçao Drydock on the Schapeneiland, the Nieuwe Havenweg and the free zone, which are under the management of Curinde, Curaçao Industrial and International Trade Development. This government-owned company (NV), which since 1984 has been charged with the management of, among other things, the free zones and industrial areas on Curaçao, has its head office in plantation house Koningsplein.

As a result of the above-mentioned developments, the plantation, which was always 35 hectares in size, is now limited to the small piece of terrain that still lies around the hill with the plantation house.

*Now we know where the name Schonegevelstraat in Mahuma comes from. Jan Noorduyn too was once a director of Shell.