Steenrijk – Rais.cw

At the name Kustbatterij (Coastal Battery) on Curaçao we first think of the public-housing dwellings built on the hill at Steenrijk. Less well known is that the name refers to the imposing defensive work, Kustbatterij Steenrijk, of which two impressive bunkers still lie underground in the bario.

The Kustbatterij was built at the start of 1940 and was ready for use as early as August of that same year. The complex on the limestone hill at Steenrijk was for the defence of the island, but above all of the oil refinery, against attacks by German U-boats and warships. The refineries of Curaçao and Aruba produced 70% of all the fuel needed for the Allies' aircraft during WWII.

English guns

The Archaeological Working Group states in its report that the Netherlands had already decided before the Second World War to build coastal batteries on Curaçao and Aruba. "And so six large guns were bought from the English, who wanted to fit one of their warships with a different type of gun. Thus a shipment of very heavy naval guns came our way, three for Curaçao and three for Aruba.

The guns were 192 mm (barrel diameter) guns with shells of as much as 100 kilos each! Three heavy guns were built on concrete foundations. They were operated by as many as ten men, most of them local conscripts assigned to the Schutterij (militia)." (See photos.)

The Kustbatterij bario

During exercises a target at sea was towed by a boat, which could be fired at from the Kustbatterij. Part of the fort and two of the original three gun emplacements were demolished in connection with the small public-housing neighbourhood that was laid out here around 1970 and named Kustbatterij. The third gun emplacement is still there but was unfortunately used by the neighbourhood as a rubbish dump, although the pollution is now less.

The gun emplacement was covered with concrete, and so you do not see that two ammunition bunkers lie beneath it.

After the war the guns were soon sawn into pieces and dumped at sea in front of the entrance to the Sint Anna Bay.

The most important parts of the coastal battery were spared, possibly because the Royal Navy took the remaining parts of the coastal battery under its care until after the public-housing construction.

The Command Bunker

Here still stands the impressive ruin of a command bunker with thick walls, built half above and half below ground. Beneath the visible bunker lie two underground rooms. There, in a deep trench in the ground, lies the entrance with a steel door. From one of the rooms you can reach the command bunker itself by ladder.

Binoculars and measuring equipment were installed here in order to aim the guns, which stood further away, properly.

This bunker was probably not demolished thanks to its very thick walls. The Command Bunker was used for a while as a carpentry workshop but stood empty again after the death of the entrepreneur.

Kamp Steenrijk: Kurá di Soldá

Close to the fort, on the side of the Bramendiweg, there still stand officers' houses that have now been fitted out as dwellings. They were part of "Kamp Steenrijk", or Kurá di Soldá (the soldiers' corral), which also had a parade ground with barracks for the officers and a large barracks for the soldiers that stood a little further on.

This camp was well secured with sturdy fences and was still managed by the Royal Navy in the 21st century. It was later transferred to the government. The last tenant was a church denomination that used it as shelter for unmarried mothers with their children, but that project no longer exists either. The complex is now almost empty.

Underground bunkers

The most impressive thing about the Kustbatterij complex is the two large underground bunkers — presumably ammunition and weapon bunkers.

Because these bunkers were built of reinforced concrete and to a fire-proof structure, they were hard to demolish, however, and are still in good condition. They have very heavy concrete doors and were probably intended for storage of ammunition and weapons, but in more recent years a party was even organised here.

Criminals also used them as a hiding place — the notorious bank robbers Pietje Bel and Sangura ("the mosquito") even hid here for days. The bunkers are not locked and can be visited, but are not easy to find! The battery has been on the list of protected monuments since 2010," according to the Working Group's report.

Fort Batavier

During the construction of the Kustbatterij in 1940, foundations were found of the former Fort Batavier, which had been built in 1803. It was a rehabilitation centre for soldiers during the second English period of 1807–1816 and was demolished again in 1826.

The residential district Steenrijk

The Steenrijk Zone comprises the public-housing neighbourhoods Steenrijk, Marie Pampoen and Kustbatterij. On this page: Steenrijk and the Kustbatterij; for the history of the bario of Marie Pampoen, which lies on the south coast, see also the page Marie Pompoen.

The deed of sale in which the name Steenrijk first appears dates from 20 May 1804 and was in the name of Philip Sint Jago Leyba. It was then "a piece of land" that lay where Pietermaai no. 188 now is and was bought in 1809 by Pieter van Steenberg. Steenrijk was thus a large mondi (bush) but changed at the beginning of the twentieth century — with the arrival of the oil and phosphate industry and growing trade — into a densely populated area with many immigrants. Because of the acute housing shortage this created, the government made leasehold land available — and there were also private grounds — for rent and sale to mainly Caribbean migrants.

The new Steenrijk

In 1923 the government bought a number of pieces of land from Herman Gorsira, then owner of plantation Vredenberg. The grounds in question — Bramendus, John Corser, the then Steenrijk and part of Klein Marie Pompoen — were merged into a single parcel: the new neighbourhood Steenrijk, on which in 1945 one of the first large-scale public-housing projects on Curaçao arose.

The northern boundary of plantation Vredenberg was formed by the road to Bramendus, a bit of land near Berg Altena whose name lives on in the — corrupted — street name Bramendiweg. John Corser was a place north of the old Steenrijk neighbourhood.

What's in a name

The name Steenrijk possibly has to do with Pieter van Steenberg, the former owner, or with the middle and low limestone terrace on which the bario is built, or with the stone quarry that the government had laid out — in the eastern bend of the Nijmegenstraat — for the maintenance of public roads.

At Marie Pampoen, between the little bays Dèpo and Papurèshi, lies the Boka di Heru, where all the machines and boilers of the stone quarry at Steenrijk and the associated railway track and carts were dumped.

Besides the names Steenrijk and Steenwijk (see Marie Pompoen), the name "Steenmijn" also occurs in the same neighbourhood. This is possibly a variant of the plantation name Steenwijk, which has yet another variant, namely "Mijnsteen". Els Langenfeld writes that on 15 April 1836 the enslaved woman Angelista Steenmijn and her two-year-old daughter Euphrosine were manumitted* by Jan Hendrik Specht, an illegitimate child of Daniel Specht and owner of plantation Fortuyn, alias Dominguito. Angelista Steenmijn received from the government a small piece of land for rent between the plantations Vredenberg and Fortuyn, and her name lives on in the Steenmijnweg.

Leopoldo Camarena

In 1923 the grounds near Steenrijk, Monte Verde, were bought by the Dominican businessman Leopoldo Camarena.

Junnes Sint Jago relates in his essay "De opkomst van de Curaçaose wijk Nieuw Nederland" (The rise of the Curaçao neighbourhood Nieuw Nederland) that Camarena had settled on Curaçao at the beginning of the twentieth century as agent for the well-known Dominican cigarettes of the brand La Fama. Thanks to this agency he became a wealthy man, so that he could buy the then very extensive Monteverde — at that time still including Chèr Asile and the present Nieuw Nederland.

Sint Jago relates further that, because of the establishment of the oil refinery in 1915 and the resulting large influx of immigrant workers, there was an acute lack of housing land near the city. Camarena played into this need and tried to arrange it so that the government, besides the infrastructure, would also build public-housing dwellings on his terrain.

And although the government did not invest on private land, Camarena partly succeeded nevertheless by a detour: in 1936 the Curaçao Roman Catholic Volksbond, a government-subsidised housing organisation, built the little houses of Den Bònt south of the Oranjestraat.

Preis di famia

Because of the increased number of inhabitants the diocese also looked for a suitable terrain to build a church in this area and received it as a gift from the Dominican businessman. This on the condition that the church be dedicated to La Virgen de Altagracia, patron saint of the Dominican Republic. Monseigneur Verriet was also allowed to take an extra piece of land for the rectory, but when he also wanted a piece of land for the construction of a school, Camarena said he could buy it for preis di famia — a friend's price.

The church of Steenrijk was designed in 1950 by the Austrian architect Guido Vetter and inaugurated on 9 May 1952 by the Dominican president Héctor Trujillo.

* manumitted = set free (the source uses the archaic "gemamumuteerd")