Phrae's 120-year-old teak houses to get a new lease of life

The US consul-general in Chiang Mai, Michael Heath, and a team recently visited these houses located within the compounds of Phrae Non-formal Education Centre and Phrae Christian Hospital.

Heath said the trip was to follow up with the teakwood house preservation in Phrae and to follow up on the history of American missionaries who devoted their work to Phrae and Thailand in general, as well as seeing what the US could do to help. 

The US consul-general was scheduled to revisit the houses to check on the progress of repair work within the hospital compound, which the team was told would cost Bt15 million. As for the other house in the education centre compound, the Teakwood House Conservation Group said they would turn it into an educational museum. The US team would come back in October to follow up on the progress, he added.

Centre director Sanit Karnjanapradit, local academic Wuttikrai Phathong, and Local Architecture Conservation of Phrae president Chinnaworn Chompoopun and others welcomed the US group and told them about the old buildings’ history. 

The houses, which are now in various stages of decay, were built for American missionaries who came to promote education, religious and medical knowledge in Phrae. The first in the centre’s compound was for missionaries working in the field of education, while the other in the hospital compound was for missionaries working in the field of medicine.

The Church of Christ in Thailand (CCT) had either received or purchased the land from the then Phrae ruler for three buildings – Phrae Christian Hospital, Charoenrasdr School and Phrae Christian Church.

Phrae shifted from being a colonial city under Siam to being part of Thailand and then World War II erupted. American missionaries made their escape from the conflict areas resulting in loss of land ownership documents. Accordingly, the lands were handed over to the state.

The CCT later obtained the Treasury Department’s permission to use the more-than-a-century-old house in the hospital compound, while the Phrae Informal Education Centre, together with Phrae Provincial Agricultural Extension Office, got permission to utilise the building in Charoenrasdr School.

Wuttikrai said the house within hospital compound had seriously deteriorated and likely to collapse within two years. Plans to renovate the place had been proposed five years ago, but there were obstacles, including shortage of money.

He urged the US Consulate or the CCT to sponsor the historic houses’ restoration and possibly transform them into an educational museum and medical museum. He said the hospital stored a vast quantity of medical supplies and equipment more than hundred years old, as well as valuable photographs such as one of Dr William Briggs, founder of Phrae Christian Hospital.

A plan to establish a foundation to raise donation money for this special campaign would require an initial funding of Bt300,000, but they had saved only Bt10,000 so far. 

In a phone interview with The Nation, Wuttikrai disclosed that the teakwood house renovation needed Bt20 million in total, but so far they had not yet raised that amount from all sectors and other interested parties.

Wuttikrai said the project had resulted from cooperation between the civil society in Phrae, the Active Generation of Phrae Family, and the Church of Christ.

They needed to start an organisation to reveal the progress and organise events like selling photographs for elementary funding, he said.