Sarinah Building ( id, Gedung Sarinah) is a 74-metre tall 15-floor department store in

Gondangdia, Menteng Gondangdia is an administrative village in the Menteng district of Jakarta, Indonesia. It has a postal code of 10350. See also * Menteng Menteng is the south-central district of Central Jakarta, one of the administrative municipaliti ...

Central Jakarta Central Jakarta ( id, Jakarta Pusat) is one of the five administrative cities () which form the Special Capital Region of Jakarta. It had 902,973 inhabitants according to the 2010 censusBiro Pusat Statistik, Jakarta, 2011. and 1,056,896 at the ...

, Indonesia. It was the first skyscraper to be built in Jakarta. Sarinah is located at the intersection of Jalan Kyai Haji Wahid Hasyim and

Jalan M. H. Thamrin Jalan M.H. Thamrin or Jalan Thamrin (M.H. Thamrin Road or Thamrin Road) is a major thoroughfare in Jakarta, Indonesia. The road is located at the center of Jakarta, running from the north end of Jalan Jenderal Sudirman at West Flood Canal at the ...

. It was Jakarta's first modern department store, famous for having Indonesia's first escalators (installed by

Hitachi () is a Japanese multinational corporation, multinational Conglomerate (company), conglomerate corporation headquartered in Chiyoda, Tokyo, Japan. It is the parent company of the Hitachi Group (''Hitachi Gurūpu'') and had formed part of the Ni ...

), for being air-conditioned and for having electronic cash registers.

History

PT Department Store Indonesia "Sarinah" (former company name of Sarinah) first piled the foundation of Sarinah building on 23 April 1963. The building was built by

Obayashi Corporation is one of five major Japanese construction companies along with Shimizu Corporation, Takenaka Corporation, Kajima Corporation, and Taisei Corporation. It is listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange and is one of the Nikkei 225 corporations. Its hea ...

and state-owned construction company

Adhi Karya Adhi may refer to: * Adhi, Rawalpindi, a village in Punjab, Pakistan * Adhi, Jalandhar, a village in Punjab, India * Aadhi (disambiguation), several topics related to South India * Adhi College of Engineering and Technology, in Chennai, India See ...

, using Japanese war reparation funds. The building was handed over to Sarinah on 22 December 1965, coinciding with Mother's Day, and was inaugurated on 15 August 1966. In the 1990s, after leasing out some of its space to

McDonald's McDonald's Corporation is an American multinational fast food Fast food is a type of mass-produced food designed for commercial resale, with a strong priority placed on speed of service. It is a commercial term, limited to food sold ...

(its first branch in Indonesia) and

Hard Rock Cafe Hard Rock Cafe, Inc. is a British-based multinational chain of theme restaurants, memorabilia shops, casinos and museums founded in 1971 by Isaac Tigrett and Peter Morton in London. In 1979, the cafe began covering its walls with rock and ...

(which later moved to

Pacific Place Jakarta The Pacific Place Jakarta is a multipurpose building located in the Sudirman Central Business District, South Jakarta, Indonesia. The building is divided into three different sections: the six-floor Pacific Place Mall, the One Pacific Place Offic ...

), Sarinah managed to rejuvenate itself as a popular place for young people.

Expansion

Two forty-one story towers are planned to be built in the area to complement the existing shopping center. The new towers will house high end restaurants; offices; and venues for meetings, conferences, and exhibition halls. The existing building will undergo major renovations to restore the originality of the building. The expansion project is expected to start by July 2020 and is projected to be completed in its entirety by mid-2022. For the renovation to be carried out on the existing building, the management ordered all tenants of to close in a 30 April 2020 memo. Notably the closing of the first

in Indonesia at the Sarinah location on 10 May 2020 attracted a considerable crowd and legal rebuke for violation of

social distancing In public health, social distancing, also called physical distancing, (NB. Regula Venske is president of the PEN Centre Germany.) is a set of non-pharmaceutical interventions or measures intended to prevent the spread of a contagious dise ...

laws in effect for the endless COVID-19 pandemic at the time. After completion of renovations on the existing building, it was opened to public on 22 March, 2022.

2016 terrorist incident

On 14 January 2016, multiple explosions and gunfire occurred near Sarinah. The

Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant An Islamic state is a state that has a form of government based on Islamic law (sharia). As a term, it has been used to describe various historical polities and theories of governance in the Islamic world. As a translation of the Arabic term ...

(ISIL) claimed responsibility. 8 people were killed, 4 civilians and all 4 attackers.

References

Cited works

* * * {{Shopping Center in Jakarta InJourney Central Jakarta Shopping malls in Jakarta Skyscrapers in Indonesia Buildings and structures in Jakarta