Kura Hulanda Village, Willemstad
Kura Hulanda & the Amazing Jacob Gelt Dekker
This is one of my favorite stories in Curaco. It is about a magical place in Otrobanda - “The other side” of Willemstad. It is about the village of Kura Hulanda. The brain child of Jacob Gelt Dekker, who restored a neighbourhood and left a legacy of magic.
When Jacob Gelt Dekker first walked through Otrobanda in the late 1980s, the neighborhood was not yet a destination. It was a place most people passed by quickly. Many of the once-elegant merchant houses stood abandoned or subdivided into unsafe shells. Roofs had collapsed, courtyards were overgrown, and entire streets carried the quiet exhaustion of decades of neglect.
Jacob was not looking for a project. He was looking at buildings. Old merchant homes, former slave quarters, workshops built of coral stone and lime mortar. The kind of architecture that tells you how a place once worked if you are willing to read it. He came to believe that Otrobanda had not failed. It had simply been left alone for too long.
So he started small. One building. Then another. What makes this neighbourhood magical is that he restored them carefully, often obsessively, keeping original walls, beams, and proportions wherever possible. Locals remember him asking craftsmen how their grandparents had done things, and insisting that modern fixes stay out of sight. This was not redevelopment. It was repair..
As the restored buildings began to connect into streets and courtyards, a bigger idea emerged. Otrobanda, he decided, needed a purpose that matched its past. The result was Kura Hulanda, a museum and cultural complex that did something unusual in the Caribbean. It told the story of the transatlantic slave trade directly, globally, and without comfort.
Gelt Dekker was a wonderful obsessive :) He assembled historians and curators from several continents. He collected artifacts with academic seriousness rather than theatrical flair. The museum did not flatter. It explained. Visitors were expected to think, not just look. It was less about sentiment and more about evidence.
When engineers advised that rebuilding would be cheaper, he asked a different question. Could it still be saved.
Instead of clearing the site, the team documented everything. Each coral stone was numbered. Surviving beams were lowered carefully, repaired, and stored. Lime mortar was mixed using historical ratios rather than modern cement. When workers suggested straightening walls that had shifted over centuries, Gelt Dekker refused. The lean, he said, was part of the building’s biography.
Progress was slow. Months passed before the structure looked like anything at all. At one point, a storm undid weeks of work. Another investor might have pulled the plug. Gelt Dekker visited the site the next morning and instructed the team to continue, exactly as before.
When the house was finally restored, it revealed its quiet brilliance. A shaded courtyard that cooled the interior naturally. Narrow windows that caught the trade winds. Rooms proportioned for living rather than display. It became one of the most intimate spaces within Kura Hulanda, often passed through without fanfare, yet deeply felt.
Years later, a former resident visited the site and recognized the floor plan instantly.
Westpunt …
Later, Gelt Dekker turned his attention west, to Westpunt, where Cliff Villa is situated.
His approach changed accordingly. In Westpunt, through projects like Lodge Kura Hulanda & Beach Club
If Otrobanda was about restoring memory, Westpunt was about protecting atmosphere. No grand statements. Just an insistence that development should not shout over nature.
The story does not conclude neatly. In his later years, Gelt Dekker faced financial pressures tied to the very ambition that had driven his work. Preservation is expensive. Returns are slow. Creditors are rarely sentimental.
He died in 2019, before seeing his legacy fully settled. Some assets were sold. Control of Kura Hulanda passed on. Critics revisited old questions about sustainability and scale.
Yet the essential point remains. Otrobanda still stands. The village was not erased. Westpunt remains largely untouched by excess. In a region where short-term development often wins, Jacob Gelt Dekker proved that long-term thinking is possible, even if it comes at personal cost.
Curacao has a tremendous debt to pay to this man.
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