Thailand’s Gingerbread Houses

Thailand’s Gingerbread Houses

The Gingerbread architectural style is so named due to a perceived resemblance to the edible, gingerbread houses popular as Christmas decorations in northern Europe during the 18th to 19th centuries. It features extensive, intricate decorations and frills while structures are often brightly coloured and usually, albeit not exclusively, constructed of wood. It’s thought to have evolved in north America, (due presumably to the various waves of German and Scandinavian immigrants), from what is termed Carpenter Gothic – the style of elaborately constructed, wooden mansions featuring turrets, towers et al which today form Hollywood’s de rigeur haunted house sets. While overall such structures are certainly quirky, they lack the elaborate carvings and flourishes of the full-on Gingerbread houses. The style was also to become popular in certain parts of late 19th century Southeast Asia and while our post concentrates on Thailand’s gingerbread houses, we’ll begin with a brief, general description of the unusual style and how it came to be.

The gingerbread design was particularly adapted to warmer climes and features louvre windows and shutters instead of glass, verandahs, high ceilings and doors to increase air flow. Finishing involves the intricate carvings and decorations, hence the preference for wood. Best remaining examples in the US are considered to be in Savannah and New Orleans and indeed the style was particularly popular among French migrants. Former French Caribbean islands such as Haiti are said to possess many fine Gingerbread-style houses. While also frequently featuring the turrets and towers of Carpenter Gothic, the intricate decorative patterns of the Haitian style are said to reflect African influences.

Curiously however, the style doesn’t appear to have caught on in a big way in France’s West African colonies, nor in Indochina after the arrival of the French from the 1860s onwards. If you search hard enough may find a few examples in Senegal or Vietnam but French colonial architecture in Indochina – particularly in the case of larger municipal structures such as the famous Saigon Post Office or Hanoi opera house – is usually described as Neoclassical or Palladian. A few remaining neo-Gothic villas can be found in Hanoi and even Phnom Penh while many provincial French period mansions incorporate a distinct Chinese style. (Seen for example with period houses in Sadec, Cai Bae, Vinh Long and other Delta Towns.) Note that the Gingerbread style – including Thailand’s Gingerbread Houses – wasn’t applied to large scale, municipal structures but was principally employed to decorate privately owned mansions and villas.

Even at the height of the French presence in Indochina, Laos, Cambodia and large areas of what were Cochin-china, Annam and Tonkin actually saw very few French settlers. Furthermore, the climate of the capital Hanoi, which today houses the largest collection of French colonial architecture, is more European than Caribbean so less suited to the airy Gingerbread style.

The British colonies of Malaya and Burma were more consistently hotter and stickier with architects also favouring aforementioned features such as high ceilings, balconies, shuttered windows etc. Consequently, some examples of both Carpenter Gothic and Gingerbread can be seen amongst mansions and villas in old hill-stations such as Myanmar’s Kalaw or Pyin Oo Lwin. Curiously, half-timbered neo-Tudor was popular in Malayan hill-stations such as Cameron Highlands. Once again, larger municipal buildings were a different style altogether and frequently displayed the heavily Moorish/Moghul influenced architecture seen in Victorian-period buildings in Penang, Rangoon, Kuala Lumpur etc. Kuala Lumpur Railway Station and Merdeka Square’s law courts are fine examples while the Gothic-Moorish fusion of Ipoh’s Kellie’s castle is an interesting oddity. (You may be more familiar with Brighton Pavilion?)

Early Dutch colonists – who ought to have been familiar with the Gingerbread House Xmas tradition – skipped the more fanciful architectural styles and much of the extensive stock of period buildings one can see today in Jakarta, Banding, Malang, Yogyakarta etc tends to favour brick and be very much on the plain and functional side. There may be a few more elaborate suburban villas we’re unaware of but generally the Dutch didn’t bother with any of that fanciful Moorish, neo-Gothic, Palladian stuff.

Ironically, although it never became a European colony, Thailand’s gingerbread houses are nonetheless some of the best remaining examples of that style to be found in Southeast Asia. A phenomenon that we’d say is largely due to the region’s flourishing teak trade during the 19th and early 20th century. Many wealthy, or would be wealthy, European timber merchants established companies in north Thailand during this period. So, German, Dutch, British, French traders with money to spare needed suitable villas to house their families, fend off some of the climate’s worst excesses and, undoubtedly, impress the neighbouring teak baron down the road.

What they had in abundance, that a tea or rubber plantation owner in Malaya didn’t have, was teak. As we said, Gingerbread largely features wooden structures but while most timber won’t last long in those climes, teak would,. They had the perfect building material to hand. Golden teak, tectona grandis, is native to temperate rather than tropical or equatorial regions with northern Thailand and Myanmar providing the ideal conditions. (Of course Malayan forests included hard woods but not in the same vast and readily accessible quantities as teak.) Stands of this durable, hard wood once covered wide swathes of the northern hills with the centres of the trade, as well as the principal remaining concentrations of Thailand’s Gingerbread houses, being Chiang Mai, Nan, Phayao, Phrae and Lampang provinces and provincial capitals. (1) (To be fair to the Burmese, greater affluence and resources means that Thailand’s Gingerbread houses have seen much better maintenance and restoration over the years than say Kalaw’s.)

Instead of incorporating African designs as in Port-au-Prince, north Thai architects incorporated local, Lanna, details and the style is sometimes known as Lanna Colonial. Carpenters and builders were invariably Burmese and Shan – possibly the same guys who’d been commissioned to build colonial villas in Kalaw or Pyin U Lwin – and certain similar decorative features can be seen on Shan style temples. Although some remain, bustling Chiang Mai City has lost many of the old villas so today Thailand’s Gingerbread houses are best seen in the less-developed provincial towns of Phrae and Lampang. The former in particular is sometimes known as the City of Teak Mansions or the Gingerbread Mansion City. Colour schemes are bright, albeit mainly pastel shades, with beige, turquoise, pale blue, cream and so-on commonly seen.

Many of these have been lovingly restored and certain, such as the Khum Wongburi Mansion – seen in our featured image – are open to the public. Back in 2020 the Department of National Parks saw fit to demolish the 1893 Bombay Burmah Trading House – which functioned as their provincial office – claiming it was structurally unsound but after a vociferous public outcry were forced to completely rebuild and restore the structure overseen by the decidedly unamused Thai Fine Arts Department.

Lampang too was a major teak trade centre and still features well-preserved Thai gingerbread houses such as the above pictured Moung Ngwe Zin building. (In the 19th century, Lampang, then known as Lakon, was more important than Chiang Mai lying 100 kilometres to the northwest.) Situated on Talad Kao Road – the main commercial street of old Lampang – the Moung Ngwe Zin building was actually commissioned by a Burmese teak merchant who apparently opened the site to serve as  store, bar, restaurant and hotel for British employees of the Burmah Trading Company. (Same enterprise whose Phrae base was torn down.) Today it’s been beautifully restored and opens as a cafe and gallery at weekends.

Another of Lampang’s well known teak merchants was Louis T. Leonowens who, after working for the Borneo (Timber) Company set up his own operation in Lampang. He was well-known as his mother was famously to the Siamese royal family and was the inspiration for the King and I tale. Note, we do say ‘tale’, however Louis’s connections to the royal family can’t have hindered his business prospects and he too constructed a villa on the edge of Lakon Town. While relatively simple in style, the house does feature a few nods to Gingerbread and, now opened as a museum, makes for a very interesting stop. 

An overnight stay in Lampang features on our Hidden Thailand tour as well as our 2-day Lampang extension. Regrettably, slightly far-flung Phrae can’t be included but it would make for an interesting side trip from Chiang Mai for anyone with a couple of days to spare. The laid-back, leafy town features the best examples of Thai gingerbread houses as well as several Shan/Burmese style temples and  a lively street market. (Around a 3 hour drive from Chiang Mai City.)

(1) Due to a commendable logging ban by the Thai government since the 1970s, many of these hills are once again coated in vast golden teak forests.