Dutch owned land in Bangkok sold, and its 100 year old villa demolished
For close to eight decades, the old residence of the Dutch embassy in Bangkok was where the Netherlands gathered its people in Thailand. On Friday 2 October 2026, it came down in a single day.
The 100 year old wooden villa stood in a garden of rain trees at 206 Wireless Road, in Lumphini. The Netherlands owned the house and the land outright from 1949. This year the government in The Hague sold the whole plot of nearly 20 rai, the embassy moved into an office tower, and the excavators followed.
For the Dutch community in Thailand, this was where King’s Day was celebrated, where Sinterklaas arrived and where children ran around the annual flea market on the lawn. For the city, it was one of the last large green spaces left in a district that keeps building upwards.
Most people walking down Wireless Road never saw past the gate.
A house with more history than most
The story of the site starts in 1911, when the land along what is now Wireless Road was still rice fields. A member of the Thai royal family bought around 23 rai there, and the house that went up became the home of Dr Alphonse Poix, a French physician to the royal court in the reign of King Rama V.
Around 1930, King Rama VII granted the land and house to Prince Boworadet. After the Boworadet rebellion of October 1933 failed, the prince went into exile in Cambodia, and the house took on a series of very different lives. An association of British alumni rented it as a clubhouse in the late 1930s, the Japanese army used it as an office during the Second World War, and from 1946 the Salesian order ran it as an office and chapel, training orphaned and disadvantaged children in trades.
In March 1949, after returning to Thailand, the prince sold the house and land to the Dutch government. Ambassador Johan Zeeman moved in that same year, and the house served as both embassy and ambassador’s residence from then on.
The building was a two storey colonial house with a three storey tower, layered gabled roofs and carved timber detailing. In 1987 the Association of Siamese Architects under Royal Patronage gave it an award for outstanding conservation, and it was restored in 2006 and 2007.
Owned, sold, and outside Thai heritage law
The distinction matters. The Netherlands held this land as freehold diplomatic property, with no lease and no expiry date. The decision to sell sat entirely with the Dutch government.
That ownership is also why Thai heritage law could not be used to protect the villa. Its award carried weight in architectural circles, and as foreign diplomatic property it carried no legal protection.
The Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs began exploring a sale in 2025, under then minister Caspar Veldkamp, as part of a government wide round of budget cuts. On 19 March 2026, ambassador Remco van Wijngaarden confirmed the move, telling the community he did so with a heavy heart. The ministry’s stated aim is premises that are more sustainable, safer and more efficient to run.
The buyer has not been made public. As of 3 October 2026, the Dutch Foreign Ministry has declined to comment on the sale contract, and Thai reporting confirms no information has been released on who bought the land.
The campaign to keep it
The resistance was organised and patient. Willem Pentermann, chairman of the Netherlands Association Thailand, led a campaign that drew more than 1,500 signatures from Dutch nationals, expats, heritage specialists and Thai residents. Letters went to the minister, to the Dutch parliament and to King Willem-Alexander, and a freedom of information request was filed for documents on the sale.
The Siam Society Under Royal Patronage also received a heritage alert from the Dutch community in 2025.
Speaking to the Dutch daily De Telegraaf after the demolition, Pentermann called the outcome “extraordinarily regrettable” and said the ministry should be held accountable for a short term decision made to close a budget gap.
Four generations under one roof
The reactions from families say more than any petition.
Liselotte Jongejans lived in Bangkok as a teenager and has returned to the embassy ever since. Four generations of her family passed through the house. “My heart is crying,” she said.
Her daughter Florine, eight, grew up celebrating Sinterklaas and King’s Day in the garden. She said she wished she could have bought the embassy herself, so it would stay forever.
Her grandfather, Aart Jongejans, traces his first memory of Asia to a night at the residence as a small boy, when his father was being posted from The Hague to Hong Kong for the Foreign Ministry. He still remembers falling asleep to the sound of the geckos. Decades later he worked in Thailand himself and visited often. He described the sale as a lasting shame, with the land now set for another tower.
Henriette Jansen watched the rubble pile up on Friday. She asked why nothing could be saved, not even the carved woodwork on the facade.
Bangkok has seen this before
Wireless Road has lost an embassy garden before. In 2017, the British Foreign Office sold the remaining 23 rai of its compound, and by August 2019 the old ambassador’s residence had been demolished for redevelopment. The Dutch campaigners referred to that sale repeatedly as the outcome they hoped to avoid.
Embassy land along this stretch is some of the most valuable in the city, and large plots rarely come to market. When they do, they tend to be built on. Green space in central Bangkok matters for daily life here, in a city dealing with heat, traffic and air quality, and every lost garden is felt by the people who live nearby.
What remains for the Dutch community
The embassy moved in August 2026 to the 22nd floor of the Dusit Central Park Offices on Rama IV Road, across from Lumpini Park, and still serves Dutch citizens and businesses in Thailand, Cambodia and Laos from there. In May 2026 the Thai cabinet approved the Netherlands’ purchase of land on Soi Ruam Rudi for a new ambassador’s residence. King’s Day will be celebrated somewhere new next year.
The memories stay with the families who made them. The trees and the villa that held them for more than a century are gone.
Have your own memories of the old embassy on Wireless Road? Asia Lifestyle Magazine would like to hear them.
