- Braga Street
Braga Street (official name in Indonesian: Jalan Braga) is a small street in the center of
Bandung ,Indonesia , which was famous in the 1920s as a promenade street. Chic cafes, boutiques and restaurants with European ambiance along the street had made the city to attain the "Paris van Java" nickname. The street starts from aT-junction with the Asia-Afrika Street (or "De Groote Postweg" during the colonial times) to the north until the city council ("balaikota"), which was formerly a coffee warehouse.Early history
Initially, Braga Street has an official name of "Karreweg". The city resident dubbed the street as "Pedatiweg", from the Indonesian language of
horse-drawn carriage s ("pedati"), because it was a narrow street (about 10 m or convert|30|ft|m wide) that only carriages could pass through. The street was built only to connect the majorGreat Post Road with a coffee warehouse, owned by a Dutch coffee plantation owner Andries de Wilde (the warehouse is now the seat of the city administration or "balaikota"). In 1856, when Bandung was the capital ofPriangan Regency , some colonial houses were built along the dirt road of Braga Street with their houses thatched with reeds, "a _al. url=http://www.visualtext.nl/bandung/braga1.htm| title=Jalan Braga| language=in Dutch| publisher=Visual Text| accessdate=2007-03-22] Colonial bookstores, watches and jeweleries retailers and boutique shops were common in the street for the high class people.Buildings
In the 1900s, along with the Dutch East Indies government plan to move the capital from Batavia to Bandung, the government included Braga Street into part of
town planning . In 1906, the city council began replacing stone byasphalt and applying a new rule of designing new buildings at the street.Art Deco buildings began to decorate the street and about 50% of which are still present with their original architecture.Starting from the south entrance, the
Gedung Merdeka (Independence Building) stands at the corner, known as the venue of the 1955Asia-Africa Conference . Built in 1895 as a clubhouse for the wealthy, the building was first named as the Concordia Society. The building was renovated twice in 1920 and 1928, the last of which was designed by two Dutch architects,Van Gallen Last and C.P. Wolff Schoemaker. It is now used as a museum of the conference.At the southeast corner of the cross-section between the Naripan Street, an eight-stories building is noticeable for its distinctive oceanwave style. Designed by Dutch architect A.F. Aalbers in 1936, the radical modern architecture building was used for the DENIS ("De Eerste Nederlandsch-Indische Spaarkas" or the First Dutch-Indies Savings) bank. Aalbers applied the
Amsterdam School architectural style with its strong expressionism dialect, shown by the rounded curves along the horizontal side and one vertical façade in the middle, but he put also the modernist architecture for the interior design. The building is still used as the headquarter of a regional bank, the Bank Jabar.ee also
*
History of Bandung
*Architecture of Indonesia References
*cite news|publisher=Kompas| title=Mengembalikan Kejayaan Jalan Braga ("Bringing Back the Glory of Braga Street")| date=
6 May 2004 | accessdate=2007-03-15| url=http://www.kompas.com/kompas-cetak/0405/06/Properti/1009340.htm| language=Indonesian
*cite news|publisher=Kompas| url=http://www.kompas.com/kompas-cetak/0309/07/iptek/534917.htm| date=7 September 2003 | title=Mengenal Karya Seni Bangunan AF Aalbers di Bandung ("Knowing A.F. Aalbers Building Artworks in Bandung")| accessdate=2007-03-16| author=Widjaja Martokusumo| language=IndonesianNotes
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.
