Doc Phu Hai House

Inside this house in Gò Công, European-style ceiling lamps share the rooms with worship statues and altars in the Vietnamese tradition. Carved wooden frames, called bao lam, stand beside furniture inlaid with mother-of-pearl, marble tables and porcelain. The horizontal boards and paired upright boards, the hoành phi and liễn đối, are written in Chinese characters.

Step outside, and the same house turns French. Seen from Hai Bà Trưng Street, it has the look of a French villa, with an arched doorway in the Roman style, relief carvings and wooden louvered doors.

This is the Đốc Phủ Hải house, one of the best-known old houses in the Gò Công area. It stands on Hai Bà Trưng Street, in Long Thuận ward. The ward is now part of Đồng Tháp province. In 1994 it was ranked a national monument of architecture and art.

Its history is more complicated than a signboard can tell. The records do not fully agree on when it was first built. Some say Trần Thị Sanh built the house in 1890. Many others suggest the first foundations may date from the middle of the 1860s, and that later generations restored and enlarged it. What is certain is that the house began with Trần Thị Sanh and her Gò Công family. The Đốc Phủ Hải residence seen today took shape through many layers of building.

The name comes from Nguyễn Văn Hải, the husband of Huỳnh Thị Điệu. He came to live in the house as a son-in-law and was later given the rank of đốc phủ. During a restoration he added a front hall in the Western style, with thick brick walls and Roman-style reliefs. He did this between about 1895 and 1900. That is why the front looks like a French villa, while the space inside keeps the old southern Vietnamese way of making a home.

Outside, the arch, the reliefs and the louvered doors are the part Hải added. They carry the mark of French colonial architecture of the late 19th century in southern Vietnam.

Inside, the eye turns to the bao lam, the hoành phi, the liễn đối and the carved door frames. The carvings cover a wide range of subjects. There are mai, orchid, chrysanthemum and bamboo for the four seasons. There are also grapes, squirrels, bats, flowers and leaves, pheasants, deer, lions and birds of prey. In the decorative tradition of the south, each subject carries a meaning of its own.

The furnishings draw the most attention. The house still keeps a bed called giường thất bảo, tables, chairs and cabinets inlaid with mother-of-pearl, marble tables, porcelain, and wooden furniture in the French style. Together they suggest the life of a prominent southern family at the end of the 19th century and the start of the 20th. The family lived in a traditional Vietnamese space, yet took in objects and styles from Europe.

Many television stations and film studios have chosen the house as a setting. The reason is easy to see. It recreates southern life of the late 19th century more truthfully and fully than many built sets.

The grounds also hold a garden, two square houses at the back and a granary for rice. Together they make a complete residence of a prominent family of the past.

The Đốc Phủ Hải house is neither the largest nor the oldest of the old houses in the Mekong Delta. But it tells a particular story about Gò Công, a land that has stood since the 19th century at the meeting point of traditional Vietnamese culture and a wave of European influence, and chose to keep both under one roof.