Historical Old Building on Jalan Hindu Medan

What do our cities need to have/provide in order to attract visitors to come? Nature scenery is always be the most popular destination but obviously its hard to find a lake or a beautiful mountain scenery in the middle of a big city like Medan. Places with incredible culinary experiences has been the pronounced as a main destination for tourists to come here since Medan indeed is a melting pot. Almost every visitors come here to try our local taste and never get disappinted. So many places with great culinary experiences are usually noted well and promoted by the local media or travel agents. As well as places as shopping spree destinations such as malls, hotels or plazas. All those gigantic and modern buildings stand out in almost every places in Medan and many more modern buildings are yet to come.

On the other side, ironically, we must see so many historical old buildings are forgotten. Like this one below.

This is a huge historical old building that you can find on Jalan Hindu Medan. This buildings is from the colonial era and was a supermarket built by a Germany architect and was taken by the Dutch. The actual condition of this building is still good but surely needs to be restored. Almost entire of the wall is covered with moss and the original colour has changed due to ages. But the antique windows are still look amazing and the entire building is still stand strong.

I am not sure about who owns this building now, is it the local authority or a big company in Medan. But I heard that some local communities are using this old building as their base camps where they can sit together with their fellow friends, smoking, drinking or doing nothing useful for this building. Many historians have asked the local authority to turn this historical building into historical museum. It will become a very useful places where people can learn about their past while preserving the building at the same time, but has got no good responses so far while the building is getting 'weaker and weaker' everytime.

Medan has zero historical museum yet (do not ask me how many mall and hotels are now here #ironic) History is not just a matter of dates and events we need to memorize during school and forgotten afterwards. This historical building should last longer so that our children can also see and understand its historical background and how Medan was built during the colonial era. I read a lot about countries which preserve their historical buildings for so many years such as England, Netherlands, etc while the opposite thing is happening here in Medan. So sad.

We should not wait until this gorgeous building becomes completely ruins before finally realize how precious it really is. Its going to be too late...

Not far from this building, you can find old coffee shop which is famous among coffee lovers in Medan. You can read my post about it here.