Architecture

The city of Port of Spain from an architectural perspective attained, albeit in a modest manner, a high point in the 1920s. During this period, the city contained most, if not all the architectural styles built over the previous 120 years.

There were the wooden, shingled buildings built by the French that had survived the fire of 1808. There still remained some buildings which had been built in the Spanish colonial style. These were built by Venezuelans for refugees from their country 30 or 40 years after the British conquest, e.g. the "Cabildo Building" on Sackville Street.

Most of the buildings on Henry, Charlotte, George, Nelson and Duncan Streets as well as the streets that crossed them, erected after the fire of 1808, with their massive blue limestone walls, were constructed in a style very similar to what exists in Fort de France, Martinique, today. They were distinguished by their tall doorways, "quoined" corners, brick filling between dressed stone, dormer windows and  stone balustrades as still seen on the roof of the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception on Independence Square.

Frederick Street was very up to date in the 1920s, some may say even futuristic. After the fire of 1897 that had burnt out lower Frederick Street, George Brown, a Scottish architect, designed and supervised the building of "The Stores." Complete with iron banisters, plate glass windows, mezzanines and lantern roofs they were fashionable, attractive, up-market and more or less survived into the 1980s. Brown's facades were reminiscent of New Orleans because of the intricately cast ironwork.

The French influence was all-pervasive in Port of Spain and was to remain so until the 1950s. There was also the simple, wooden chattel house, standing on pillar trees, usually two-roomed, and neat as a pin. The idea for those houses was more than likely imported  from Barbados, where ordinary people hardly ever owned land but built chattel houses that could easily be moved if the need arose.

The town's suburbs, Belmont, Newtown and Woodbrook, were expanding, driven by a modicum of prosperity as a result of the Cocoa economy, which had peaked in the last decade of the previous century. The little "Gingerbread" houses of those neighbourhoods were equipped with porticoes, jealousied windows, pitched roofs with dormers, and lots of lacy woodwork. Some were quite petite, others large and rambling, some imposing. You will find variations of these in Haiti, Martinique and Guadeloupe. All this had come with the French people; it was part of their cultural baggage, along with Carnival, long dresses over many lace petticoats, fine embroidered "foulards" and a gay madras kerchiefs tied so as to tell whether the lady was a widow or "looking".

Right alongside all of this was real poverty, lived out in the barrack yards. These yards were old stables and slave quarters of a previous epoch that had been hired out for rent when the original owners had moved on to better parts of town. Trinidad's first slum lords would have balked at such a description, and may have sought excuse by saying that the peppercorn rent charged saved many a West Indian immigrant from homelessness.

Most of old Port of Spain's old French buildings that once clustered round the Catholic Cathedral were destroyed by fire in the 1980s or willfully left to degenerate into dilapidation. Most towns in the Caribbean possessing such architecture do what it takes to preserve those buildings. We in Trinidad, however, not dependent on the visitor market for hard currency, let our old town vanish. It all began when some one said, "Massa day done", and when people without a grasp of cultural and aesthetic values got so rich that they were able to buy properties and sacrifice the historical and architectural gems on them for yet another air-conditioned atrocity. - all under the excuse of the three "p": popularity, progress and profit.

The face of the city also contained formal or polite architecture which may be described as architect-designed and builder-built. There are classical buildings, defined as one whose "decorated elements derived from the architectural vocabulary of the ancient world, the classical world" (John Newel Lewis H.B.M., from John Summerson's "The Classical Language of Architecture"). Newel Lewis goes on to say,

"The sense of authority and dignity, which the classical order inspires, makes it a suitable language for official buildings. The Red House uses the Corinthian order both in columns and in half columns... The General Hospital employs the Doric and Ionic. The Tuscan is often used, in the Railway Station for example... It is surprising how many orders are found in Port of Spain."

The Building and Loan Association building, on the corner of Queen and Chacon Street, is an excellent example of classical artwork in the cityscape. Around and about one may still see the Georgian style. It exists in the Police Barracks at St. James and the Salvation Army's Men's Hostel on the corner of Sackville and Edward Street. One excellent example was the old Deanery on Abercrombie and Queen Street; that's gone now.

The overall destruction of the buildings of Port of Spain and of our architectural heritage all over Trinidad and Tobago is a disturbing indication of what is taking place in the psyche of the body social and the body politic. We the people, we the town planners, we the architects, we the property owners, ongoingly destroy the buildings that define our history, ourselves. Every old mansion acquired by a developer is torn down replaced by a block of apartments. So-called city planners award the permissions for that, and in so doing destroy future generations' proud heritage.

Also, whenever there is a fire, there is no thought of restoration. The old Town Hall and the Princes' Building were examples for that. In another country it may have been rebuilt so as to maintain the personality of the town, but we, a society whose children don't re-use even a plastic fork, don't seem to have that in us. In Europe, whole cities were rebuilt in the style and manner of there prewar condition. The preserving and restorations of a nations architectural heritage is about maturity, it is about valuing what we have so as to impart it to another generation. Maybe it takes a couple of wars and total destruction for a society to mature.

The Red House

It was a hot night in the dry season of 1808. Mosquitoes seemed to be attacking the little town of Port of Spain by the millions, swarming out from the nearby swamplands. It was one of those nights when the noise from the streets was especially annoying. Tossing and turning in the bed, sweating; why isn't there the habitual cool breeze?

Suddenly, a piercing scream disrupts the uneasy slumber. Governor Thomas Hislop sits bolt upright in his soldier cot. The blanket slips to the floor. The scream, and the stinging smell that gets the adrenaline pumping instantly: smoke. Now, he hears the crackling. Yes, fire, and a big one at that.

The fire that had Governor Hislop startled from his sleep destroyed a large part of Port of Spain. The small town had grown tremendously in the last twenty years, since thousands of French immigrants and their African slaves flocked to the island to establish plantations and businesses here.

The prevalent building style of the city was wood and shingles, a bad choice of materials as this night of flames and smoke was to prove. Hislop had to deal with hundreds of homeless people from one day to the next. Valuable historical records from Spanish times were destroyed. To deal with the chaos and to prevent such a disaster in the future, Hislop's administration passed legislation with regard to building regulations, stipulating that the re-building of the destroyed parts of town and any other new construction had to be made with brick and stone.

A wise decision, which was put into action by Hislop himself and his successors Munro, Woodford, Grant, Hill, Gregor and McLeod. The latter, Sir Henry McLeod, laid on February 15, 1844 the foundation stone for a new government building on the west side of Brunswick Square (now Woodford Square). This was to be the first building on the site where the Red House now stands - let us call it the "first Red House", even though it was not then known by that name.

The architect of the first Red House was Richard Bridgens, known to us also by his drawing of Trinidadian people, i.e. Amerindians, the "Negro Figuranti" and scenes of Tobago. He was then appointed as the Superintendent of Public Works, a sector of the public administration that had been very busy since the 1810s and 1820s, when Governor Woodford did some major structural changes in the town.

The builders of that first Red House were G. de la Sauvagère and A. A. Pierre. The final building was somewhat smaller than the second (present-day) Red House. Somewhat artless, it was comprised of two blocks, connected by an archway through which coaches could pass from Abercromby Street into Prince Street (now Sackville Street). In those days, it was exclusively pedestrians, people on horseback, and carts and buggies that populated the streets, and a detour around the Red House would have been inconvenient for those muscle-powered means of transport. Also, in case of fire or public turmoil, the part of town behind the Red House had to be easily accessible for fire fighters or for the police.

The first Red House was opened in 1848 by then Governor Lord Harris, an enlightened man who contributed much to the development of the island, in particular to learning and education, founding a library and the first public school system that included Indian and black children in the countryside. The building was then not quite completed, but the inauguration ceremony in the Trinity Cathedral took place anyway.

Fifty years later, it was still not completed, for reasons unbeknownst to the author. Olga Mavrogordato in her book "Voices in the Street" quotes the Port of Spain Gazette of 1892:

"Nothing further had been done to complete the buildings since their erection some fifty years ago. The only attempt to relieve the monotony of the whole is to be seen in the arching of the carriageway through the courtyard which is a perfect skeleton and, like the ruins of Pompeii, is more suggestive of what the buildings must have been than of what they were intended to be."

The Director of Public Works in the 1890s, J.E. Tanner, apparently took those comments to heart, and together with the increasing need for a proper public records office, £15,000 was allotted over the next years to carry out extensions and alterations. The first Red House started to look a little more stately.

In 1897, the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria was celebrated all over the British Empire. Trinidad, too, spruced up, and the first Red House was painted red. This was when it got its name - not officially, but by Trinidadians, who henceforth referred to it by that name. The name stuck, and so did the red colour, at least up to the year 2001 when this article was written.

Five years later, on the 23rd March 1903, the first Red House was destroyed. Its windows were smashed by stones, the plaster of the walls damaged here and there by bullets, and then the whole thing went up in flames: an enraged mob vented its anger on the government's property. This incident is known today as the "Water Riots", since it started with the discussion of the increase of water rates by the Legislative Council, and ended with panic, death and destruction on the side of the protesters outside. The governor then was Sir A.C. Maloney. Again, for us interested in history, valuable records were destroyed, making it at times impossible to retrace the facts of times past.

In 1904, re-building began. It was a time of construction on the whole. Cocoa had brought a lot of cash into the economy, and the administration and some private individuals invested in beautiful buildings that are today Trinidad's heritage treasure: the Magnificent Seven were also erected in 1904.

The second Red House is the one we know today. Designed and built by German architect D.M. Hahn, who was Chief Draughtsman of Public Works, it cost an estimated sum of £47,485. It was much more splendid and elaborate than the first Red House, with beautiful gesso work in the Legislative Council Chamber (now the Parliament Chamber) and in the Justice Hall, which is depicted in its old, undecorated form in the first house on the cover of the Digest. The gessowork and the panels were in fact made in England, shipped to Trinidad in parts, and installed by Italian craftsmen who also worked in the halls of for example Whitehall.

The carriageway between the two wings of the Red House was closed by Hahn for vehicular traffic, but remained open to pedestrians, and had a beautiful fountain in the centre under the rotunda. The square opposite to it was renamed Woodford Square during World War I, when Germany and its city of Braunschweig (Brunswick) had become enemies of the British Empire and no major landmark was to be named for them. Similarly, Hanover Street (named for the German House of Hanover, whence Queen Victoria's husband hailed) became the extension of Abercromby Street.

Inspite of all these name changes, the Red House remained the Red House and is now officially referred to under this name.

Water as a Weapon

What happened in 1903, when an angry mob set the Red House to the torch? A look at the Water Riots by Lenny Anduze from his book "When the Lion Stumbled". It seems as though history repeats itself in Trinidad - this time the other way round, but with the same intentions on all sides!

Looking back at the first Red House, which had been designed in 1844 by Richard Bridgens, Superintendent of Public Works, architect John Newel Lewis, H.B.M., observed that “the building was sober enough, heaven knows”. Its main feature was a carriageway through its courtyard. This was to keep Prince Street open to Sackville Street, and was the only stylish motive in a somewhat austere and boring building.

The original drawings did in fact have an ornate facade, but Bridgens died before he could finish the implementation. His executor asked too high a price for the construction, so the Red House was left plain like it was for several years. As time went by, however, it was decorated somewhat enthusiastically.

This is the story of 1903, when the first Red House was burnt down. The story actually begins a few years earlier, when the Secretary of State for the Colonies closed down the Port of Spain Borough Council, replacing it by four Governor-nominated officials. The official reason was the Council’s debt to the government; the unofficial reason was that the Borough Council was regarded as a “hot bed” of dissent with the Colonial Government, where middle class coloured professionals and “pseudo intellectuals” were in pursuit of their own agendas.

Some of the councillors had made a little money and had risen to “insular importance and sophisticated living”. They had forgot, however, that in the final analysis an “overlord does not have to bargain with his subjects”, as Lenny Anduze puts it in his historical novel “When the Lion Stumbled”.

They had been disenfranchised at the stroke of a pen. The rage at which they saw this as a public humiliation and denigration of their status turned into open hostility to the government, and they vowed revenge.

As Anduze points out, “their discomfort was all the acute because the Colonial Government itself was very efficient in administrating the island. The town’s streets, squares and public buildings were maintained to a high standard, as were hospital services, the post office, treasury and audit offices; the law courts dispensed justice which was put into effect by a disciplined police force and prison service. The country districts were under the control of a warden and all were fully controlled and supervised by the central authority at the Red House in Port of Spain.

“The disenfranchised burgesses knew that they could not claim that it was an incompetent government that had dissolved their bankrupt council, so they sought ways of seriously embarrassing the government, hoping that if the consequent outcry of the population was sufficiently damaging, the Governor would be forced to seek their aid in settling matters. They would then demand the restoration of the council with full powers to manage their own affairs."

Then they discovered that the weapon was already in their hands - actually in their homes - water! It is paradoxical that a tropical island with an average rainfall of about 70 inches per year, often as high as 90 inches, should ever lack water, but a water shortage came about in the towns because the pipes to the houses were connected to reservoirs, built to hold only sufficient water to supply the ‘reasonable needs’ of the population. An ‘unreasonable’ use would run the reservoir dry, and that was the weapon which the disenfranchised group chose to fight the Government.

“In 1900, the Government realised that water was being deliberately wasted and the levels in the reservoir were falling," writes Anduze. "In its checks and surveys, it discovered that leakage in the old mains was not responsible. Rather, taps and fountains were being left running all day and all night; pools were being emptied and filled more frequently than usual; large private plunge baths holding between one thousand and two thousand gallons were in constant used - often emptied more than once each day, and that one house alone consumed 8,170 gallons daily."

The Colonial Secretary, Courtenay Knollys, told the Governor, Sir Alfred Moloney, that something needed to be done against the deliberate wasting of water.

"Sir, there is no longer any doubt that much, if not all, of this waste is deliberate. Taps all over the town are being re-opened as soon as Government officers shut them, and thousands of gallons of clear water can be seen flowing through the gutters every minute," said Knollys.

"But why?" asked the Governor.

"A very deliberate motive, Your Excellency. Since the abolition of the Borough Council, there is a section of the inhabitants doing its best to create unrest in the town."

"Subversive?"

"No, Sir, They keep well within the law; but my information leads me to think that the instigators of the waste water campaign intend to cause trouble for us by depriving the town of water."

"With the hope of gaining what?"

"Of creating a situation where they would be called on to co-operate with the Government when they will state their terms, one of which would be the immediate re-instatement of the borough Council."

"I will not stand for that, Knollys. They had more than one chance to come to a reasonable settlement over the Council and threw it away arrogantly - I will not be defied."

Turning to the Director of Public Works, Walsh Wrightson (after whom Wrightson Road is named), Sir Alfred asked:

"What do you suggest, Wrightson?"

"That our action be in two parts - the short term and the long term. In the short we should consider cutting off the supply to selected areas of the town for specified hours; these times to be dependent on the rainfall and condition of the reservoirs. As regards the longer outlook, we should begin immediate construction of the pipeline and pumping station to provide an additional water supply to Port of Spain from the Diego Martin valley and install meters for the consumers."

"What effect will the cost of all that have on the water rate?"

"An increase of not more than 1 percent."

"All right, draw up the plans."

"As soon as these decisions were made public, the members of the dissolved Borough Council, angry that their plan to force the Governor's hand was to be contested, formed the 'Ratepayers Association', writes Lenny Anduze. "They held public meetings in Brunswick Square opposite the Red House within sight and earshot of the Governor's private office, calling on the people to resist all the proposed changes - especially the installation of meters.

The more Governor persisted in his plans and in refuting the Ratepayers Association misrepresentations in the daily press, the more abusive theygrew. In February 1903, with the dry season imminent, the Governor ordered the cutting of 80,000 gallons daily used in flushing the gutters, and introduced a bill entitled "The Port of Spain Waterworks Ordinance 1903".