Penstraat (part 1)

The Penstraat, one of the oldest streets on Curaçao, has a very colourful history, partly thanks to its many striking residents. It was earlier called Weg naar Caracasbaai (Road to Caracasbaai) and later also (Weg naar) Vianen or Fiana, because it led to the country house Vianen at the end of the street. "Vianen" became "Pen" in popular speech after the present Avila Beach Hotel was bought by the English as accommodation for the British Governor, who did not want to live in Fort Amsterdam. In the deed of purchase it was called "The Premises called the Government Penn at the Vianen".

The Penstraat was still counted as part of Pietermaai until at least 1906 and now forms for a large part the southern boundary of the bario Nieuw Nederland.

Cerro Bonito

At the beginning of the Penstraat, at Cerro Bonito, there stood according to Brenneker for years a little hill that was a gathering place for people coming from Banda Riba to Punda. At Cerro Bonito — derived from Cerro Borico, donkey hill — the donkeys were tied up, from where people continued on foot. The present town house Cerro Bonito (Pietermaaiweg 160) stands on the spot of the former little hill and was built on the commission of the businessman Salomon Elias Levy Maduro. For this he had the Corsican architect Bartholomé Lyon come over, and in 1857 he moved into the house with his family. Maduro then also bought the first shèrs (horse carriage) on Curaçao as a means of transport between their town house and landhuis Rooi Catootje, which the family used as a country residence.

S.E.L. Maduro was the progenitor of the Maduros on Curaçao. He worked his way up from nothing to the top and in 1883, the year in which he died, was the wealthiest businessman of Curaçao.

Cerro Bonito was a hotel from 1950 to 1960, then a brothel until in 1980 it was bought and restored by the Government and taken over by the Dienst Jeugdzaken (Youth Affairs Department). The property has finally been given in ground lease to Pen Resort BV as part of the future luxury all-inclusive Pyrmont Hotel, Autograph Collection by Marriott. The name Pyrmont is not new, as we shall see further on in the text.

Jashi

The construction of this project with 313 rooms will come to lie between Cerro Bonito and the Kas di Pueblo (People's House) on the sea side of the Penstraat. Between the two monumental buildings there is now a large bare terrain where already in the 18th century various monumental villas, some even with gardens, were built. Over the years these mostly fell into disrepair. Cerro Bonito, Kas di Pueblo and Villa Sebastopol were the only three that had still withstood the ravages of time and had been declared protected monuments. In 2015, however, Villa Sebastopol (Penstraat 16) was razed to the ground by the developer of the terrain.

The earlier-vanished monumental buildings had made way for the slum district Jashi, which lay on the sea side of the Penstraat, west of Villa Sebastopol. In connection with tourist developments, Jashi was cleared and demolished by the government around the year 2000, and the dozens of residents were offered FKP houses next to the Tio Daou sports fields near Santa Rosa.

Fort Beverwijk

Close to Jashi there stood on a map from 1785 also the almost unknown Fort Beverwijk "…situated at the foot of Berg Altena, by the sea". In 2011 a research by the Werkgroep Archeologie, the NAAM* and the Monumentenbureau (Monuments Office) searched in vain for any remains of this fort. Possibly the structure — which had been abandoned for a very long time — was swept away by the great hurricane of 1877. Various dwellings along the coastal strip of Pietermaai also disappeared then, and others suffered serious damage. The plan to build tourist accommodation on this terrain is not new: as early as 1970 there were plans to build the Penresort in the middle of this extensive terrain.

According to the architect Michael A. Newton there were also once plans for the Kas di Pueblo to (demolish and) build a resort.

Kas di Pueblo

Newton tells that the monumental property Kas di Pueblo dates from the mid-19th century and was sold in 1880 for 22,500 guilders to Mordechay Salomon Levi Maduro, a son of S.E.L. Maduro. Mordechay was married to Emma Lopez Penha, and it is assumed that this couple considerably extended the house. They called it "Pyrmont", after Emma of Waldeck-Pyrmont, who had shortly before married King Willem III of the Netherlands. After the death of the Maduro couple, the building was during the war also the lodging of unmarried police officers and Dutch unmarried firemen. After the war the building was fitted out as the Penthouse hotel.

The daughter of Mordechay and Emma, Sarah Levi Maduro, married Joseph (Jojo) Alvares Correa, founder of the Maduro & Curiels Bank, and their daughter was the versatile artist May Henriquez–Alvares Correa (1915–1999).

May lived for years at the family's country house, Bloemhof, at the beginning of the Santa Rosaweg. About her grandmother, Emma Lopez Penha, May said that "at weekends and on holidays she was driven in a fully loaded car with chauffeur from her house in the Penstraat to Bloemhof, followed by a shèrs with staff and provisions".

Doktoor

Penstraat 22–24 was later known above all as the former party building and headquarters of the Nationale Volkspartij of Curaçao, the Kas di Pueblo (The People's House). Maria Liberia Peters, ex political leader of the Partido Nacional di Pueblo (PNP) and former prime minister, tells: "The building was bought on 15 July 1947 by the 'Stichting Fondo di Autonomia' (Autonomy Fund) of mr. dr. Moises Frumencio da Costa Gomez, 'the Doktoor', and a year later he founded the PNP. After completing his legal training at what is now Radboud University in Nijmegen / the Netherlands, he obtained in 1935, as the first Antillean, the doctorate in Constitutional Law at the University of Amsterdam. His thesis read: 'Het Wetgevend Orgaan van Curaçao, bezien in het licht van de Nederlandse Koloniale Politiek' (The Legislative Body of Curaçao, viewed in the light of Dutch Colonial Policy). This indicates that already during his student years he was striving for new constitutional relations between Curaçao and the Netherlands. With the purchase of the building an end came to the underground activities of the organisation. Kas di Pueblo became 'a building with a cultural, social and political mission': promoting social provisions in general, study opportunities for the socially weak, education and training in preparation for the new status of Curaçao within the Kingdom," says Liberia Peters.

Lightning action

The building, painted entirely in the party colour green, was sold on 1 July 1996 by the foundation "Fondo di Autonomia" for 1,400,000 guilders to the De Groen family. They were major shareholders of the Dutch Grolsch breweries. Their plan to demolish Kas di Pueblo for the construction of a resort failed through a rapid action by Fundashon Pro Monumento to have the building declared a monument. Kas di Pueblo was bought in 2011 by Pen Resort BV and, like Cerro Bonito, is being restored as part of the Pen Resort.

The Octagon

Further along the Penstraat on the beach there also stood the country residence "Rustwijk" of the government secretary Willem Prince, and east of it the Octagon: the octagonal little tower of two storeys on the rock at the Avila Beach hotel, which in popular speech is also called Altagòms (derived from Octagon) or Dakki di parasol (parasol roof). It was disputed whether it belonged to The Pen, but according to the Capriles family of the neighbouring Vredewijk it belonged to their estate.

The little tower is said to have been built in the 17th century and was owned by Mordechai Ricardo, a local lawyer and business associate of the Venezuelan freedom fighter Simón Bolívar. Ricardo had taken Bolívar and his family under his wing during their stay on Curaçao. Thus the Octagon was once the home of Juana and Maria Antonia, the sisters of the Venezuelan freedom fighter.

Museum

The hurricane of 1877 undermined the base of the rock on which the house stood to such an extent that it had to be reinforced. The Octagon, almost identical to when Bolívar stayed on Curaçao, was later owned by the firm Maduro & Sons, who sold it to the government. The latter kept it as historic heritage, and in 1968 the Museo Bolivariana was opened here under the management of the foundation Octagon Museum, with a collection of documents, prints and objects that tell of his life and his merits during the struggle for independence in Latin America. Besides the exhibition, the museum also has various beautiful restored 19th-century locally made pieces of furniture. The Octagon lies in an area that was formerly a popular bathing resort.

The Pen

Next to the Octagon stands the most important building in the street: The Pen, or La Belle Alliance, the stately country residence of the governors around the 19th century.

The Pen formerly also served as a Masonic lodge, private school, boys' boarding school, dwelling house and medical clinic before it was fitted out as a hotel in 1949. There has been various speculation about the name Pen. John de Pool writes that the English built a prison here during their rule, and the word Pen would be derived from penitentiary — prison. Junnes st Jago, who has done extensive research into the origin of the nearby Nieuw Nederland, states that it is unlikely that a prison ever stood here.

Pen also means in English "residence" or "stable" or an enclosed terrain where small livestock was kept. The deed of purchase indicates that it was bought as a residence for the British governors, but there was also an animal enclosure with a horse stable here, which had been laid out for the amusement of the British governors (1803–1806) and (1807–1816) and their visitors.

There is also a controversy in historiography as to whether the villa was built by the English or by the Dutch. It is said to have been built at the beginning of the nineteenth century by the British governor Cockburn. Others believe that Dutch administration did this, to a design by the well-known architect Henry Graham. But it is more likely that Graham once renovated it: Bernadette Heiligers-Halabi mentions in her book La Belle Alliance that the manor house had been built long before the arrival of the English on Curaçao by a French occupant of the time. The name "La Belle Alliance" presumably refers to an alliance of that time against Napoleon.

*NAAM: National Archeological Anthropological Memory Management

Sources

• M. A. Newton: "Kaas di Pueblo – Penstraat 22–24" (2015); Kas di pueblo, Kas ku un Mishon — Fundashon Maria Liberia Peters (2019)
• van der Hoeven: Verslag over Verdwenen monumenten Penstraat (2022)
• Heiligers-Halabi: La Belle Alliance (1992)
• P.A. Eeuwens: "Curaçao in 1803–1804", in Onze eeuw, vol. 8 (1908)
• P. Brenneker: Sambumbu, various editions
• J. Sint Jago: article "De opkomst van de Curaçaose wijk Nieuw Nederland" (2023)

With thanks to: François van der Hoeven, Christel Monsanto, Maria Liberia Peters, André Rancuret, Walter Blankert, Lucie de Jong and Mongui Maduro Library.