Groot Kwartier is a neighbourhood of

Willemstad Willemstad ( , ; ; en, William Town, italic=yes) is the capital city of Curaçao, an island in the southern Caribbean Sea that forms a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. It was the capital of the Netherlands Antilles pr ...

, Curaçao. It is better known as Emmastad, a villa ward built by

Royal Dutch Shell Shell plc is a British multinational oil and gas company headquartered in London, England. Shell is a public limited company with a primary listing on the London Stock Exchange (LSE) and secondary listings on Euronext Amsterdam and the New Yo ...

for its employees. Emmastad is officially part of Groot Kwartier.

History

Groot Kwartier started as a plantation in 1694. The plantation produced bananas,

divi-divi ''Libidibia coriaria'', synonym ''Caesalpinia coriaria'', is a leguminous tree or large shrub native to the Caribbean, Central America, Mexico, and northern and western South America. Common names include divi-divi, cascalote, guaracabuya, gu ...

and livestock, but was mainly known for its large fresh water supply. In 1915, the nearby plantation Asiento was bought by

. Initially the grounds were used as a harbour. In 1923, neighbourhoods were built on Groot Kwartier to house employees hired from other Caribbean islands. In 1929, the area owned by Shell was renamed Emmastad. Between 1945 and 1955, Emmastad was enlarged with residential neighbourhoods for the Dutch employees of Royal Dutch Shell. The houses constructed during that period, were luxurious free standing villas. Emmastad was a segregated and gated community where blacks and coloureds were only allowed entry with a special pass. In the 1960s, Shell started selling the houses. Emmastad is no longer segregated, and has become a popular neighbourhood for the middle class, however the older parts of Groot Kwartier are poorer.

References

Bibliography

* Populated places in Curaçao Willemstad {{Curacao-geo-stub