Sultan Gate and Gedung Kuning

The name Sultan Gate literally described the route: the street led to one of the entrances to the palace of Sultan Hussein Shah, the Malay ruler who settled in Kampong Gelam in the early nineteenth century. Beside the palace, a house was built in the middle of the same century for his grandson, Prince Tengku Mahmud. According to family tradition, Mahmud himself ordered its walls painted yellow—the color of the Malay royal family. Hence the name Gedung Kuning, the “Yellow House.”

The house acquired its main story only after the sultan's family pledged it for debts. The merchant Haji Yusoff bin Haji Mohamed Noor grew up nearby. “Haji” is an honorific form of address for a Muslim who has made a pilgrimage to Mecca. Yusoff earned money from headwear and belts with a pocket for money: pilgrims bought such belts, and his goods sold throughout the region.

Yusoff wanted to settle his second wife and children here, and he believed that the former prince's house should return to a Malay family. In nineteen twelve, he gave all his savings for it—according to his descendants' recollections, about thirty-seven thousand dollars of the time in cash.

Seven years later, Yusoff needed capital for trade, and the house had to be sold. He regretted that decision. When Gedung Kuning was put up for sale again six years later, the owner refused to deal with him and called Yusoff a poor Malay.

What happened next is known from the merchant's great-granddaughter's account. Yusoff hired a middleman, Haji Umar “Broker”. Umar told the owner that the wealthy Sultan of Terengganu wished to buy the house and arranged the transaction in the sultan's name. On the day of the signing, Yusoff arrived with cash instead of the sultan. The documents had already been drawn up, the money lay before the seller, and he yielded the house to its former owner.

Yusoff lived here for almost another thirty years. After his death, his children and grandchildren occupied the rooms; for a time, six related households fit under this roof. Four generations of the family remained in Gedung Kuning until nineteen ninety-nine.

Now the restaurant Permata operates behind the yellow facade. Its guests' tables stand in the house that the merchant once sold for his trade, then regained by appearing at the last moment in place of the sultan.