FRIDAY, March 29, 2024
nationthailand

This was Nai Lert’s world

This was Nai Lert’s world

The pioneering businessman’s magnificent teak home reopens after years of renovation

AFTER ALMOST three years and Bt300 million worth of refurbishment, twin century-old teak houses once owned by the famous Nai Lert – Lert Sreshthaputra – have reopened to the public.
Nai Lert (1872-1945) was in his time one of Thailand’s foremost businessmen, running ferry and bus services, an ice factory, a shipyard, a department store and a hotel, as well as a taxi company that used imported cars. King Rama VI (Vajiravudh) bestowed on Nai Lert the title Phraya Bhakdinorasreth.
Extensive renovation and landscaping at his 34-rai property on Wireless Road next to the Swissotel Nai Lert Park Bangkok was completed late last year, just in time for the centenary of the year the first house was built. Together they’re now called the Nai Lert Park Heritage Home, which offers a chance to trace the history of his esteemed family.
In charge of the project, Naphaporn Bodiratnangkura is the great-granddaughter of Nai Lert and granddaughter of Thanpuying Lersakdi Sampatisiri, a co-founder of the Nai Lert Park Hotel, the neighbouring property since operated by Swissotel.
“After my grandmother passed away six years ago the house was closed for years,” she says. “The family finally agreed to bring it back to its former glory while maintaining the spirit of Nai Lert, who erected the buildings in 1915.”
Nai Lert chose a bungalow style for the original teak home, a double-deck roof, raised gables and an open plan for the interior. The second house, now sharing its lush green surroundings, was constructed five years later, connected to the main house via a corridor. 
The teak was left over from the dockyards – between 1915 and 1917 Nai Lert used it in custom-building ocean liners for the US and Denmark as well as ships for the Royal Siamese Navy. 
Naphaporn points out that Nai Lert designed his own home, drawing it in chalk on the floor and having skilled artisans make it a reality. “It took us almost a year to find a tradesman skilled enough to raise the foundation and another eight months to raise both buildings’ foundations 15 feet above the ground,” she says. 
The family has 30,000 “collectibles”, too many to have on view at the same time, so they’ll rotate, she says. “We have no background in museum management, so we hired a company to handle the collection, but the place felt lifeless. In the end my mother, Sanhapit, who knows the family’s background best, was the right person to make this a living museum with true spirit.”
In 1909 Nai Lert purchased the land on the bank of the Saen Saeb Canal, running from Pratunam to Ploenchit. Portions were put up for sale, including the property to the south where the British Embassy was established. Nai Lert hung on to the beautiful 60-rai plot bordered by Wireless Road and the Somkit Canal to build his resort home in a park-like setting. The general public was invited to visit the park on Sundays, which led to it being called Nai Lert Park.
 Visiting today, you instantly see a sign explaining why the founder was regarded as a trendsetter – his Fiat 508 Balilla is parked out front. It was the first Fiat he imported between 1932 and 1937 and he loved driving it around town – accompanied by his pet leopard Tam. Inside the house is a studio photo of the pair and another of them in a horse-drawn carriage, Nai Lert at the reins. 
His public transport took the form of “white buses” equipped with Austin engines, passengers filling two long parallel benches. There’s a replica of one of these buses on display too.
“He went into the transport business in 1909 with the carriages drawn by eight horses, carrying eight to 10 passengers,” says tour guide Wutichai Wongkoed. “At the same time he also operated the public ferry from Pratunam to Klong Samwa. 
“A year later he replaced the horse carriages with motorised vehicles – three-wheeled Ford cars with parallel bench seating. The first route ran between Pratunam and Yosse Bridge near Wat Thep Sirin. By 1933 the bus routes extended across Bangkok. His marketing strategy let ferry passengers use the same ticket when transferring to the bus.”
And, after 1920, Wutichai adds, the city’s largest bus terminal was right there on the grounds of Nai Lert’s house.
Thanpuying Lersakdi, his only daughter, inherited the business empire. In 1975 then-prime minister MR Kukrit Pramoj turned the bus service into a state enterprise, 
 Mahanakorn Transport, which was the forebear of the Bangkok Mass Transit Administration.
Visitors to the house also get to see two boats Nai Lert designed himself. The first was built in 1917 for sailing the coast, and the other, launched in 1932, was, though bigger and wider, more suited to canal cruises. It has a small bedroom, a bathroom and a galley kitchen.
Outside the house Wutichai points out the three-metre-deep lotus pond. During World War II, Allied aircraft aiming for nearby Makkasan railway station managed to land 22 bombs on Nai Lert’s property. “The front house was totally destroyed,” he says, “but Nai Lert turned a large crater out front into the lotus pond.”
In the vast living room are glass cabinets holding items accumulated by Nai Lert and his wife, Khunying Sinn, and their daughter Lersakdi and her husband Binich Sampatisiri. These include royal decorations, Benjarong porcelain, silverware and glass bottles of lemonade, 
 well known as nam ma ned. Once again Nai Lert was the pioneer – the first Thai to import the beverage from Singapore, which he sold at the Nai Lert Store in his seven-storey “skyscraper” on Charoen Krung Road, the city’s tallest building when it was completed in 1927. 
Nai Lert brought in whiskey, wine, beer, ham, canned sausage, coffee machines, sewing machines and bicycles for retail, while the building also housed his Hotel de la Paix, a European-style bar and the ice factory.
Thanpuying Lersakdi has a room dedicated to her, with her working desk and clothes including the uniform she wore on formal occasions as minister of transport in 1976 – she was Thailand’s first female Cabinet minister. 
Walking canes collected by Phraya Srisena, her husband’s father, are on display too. He was Siam’s first ambassador to Japan. Topped with silver, copper and ivory in various shapes, such canes were popular among nobles and government officials during the reign of Rama V. 
In a small room overlooking the canal, Khunying Sinn used to guide her kitchen staff amid beautiful crystal glassware and tea sets. There’s a covered hole on the floor. “Khunying Sinn would lie on the floor upstairs getting a massage, but that didn’t stop her from looking through the hole to check on the cooks.”
The residential compound also has the Thai-food restaurant Ma Maison. Many of the dishes served there come from Sinn’s recipes. (See the restaurant review on Page 10.) 
“My great-grandfather took on many projects, and some failed while others succeeded,” says Naphaporn. “Having the chance to learn the family history has made me more mature and meticulous about preserving what’s inherited from our ancestors. It’s not only about family bonds, but also a chapter of Thai history.”
 
A PAGEANT OF HISTORY
The Nai Lert Park Heritage Home is on Wireless road next to the Swissotel Nai Lert Park Bangkok. 
Guided tours are conducted in Thai and English every Thursday and Friday at 11am and 2 and 4pm. 
Admission is Bt500 (Bt100 for children and students, Bt1,000 for foreigners). 
Find out more at (02) 655 4775-6 and the Facebook page.
 
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