People know Laventille today for the negative stigma of crime. Once, however, it was a veritable "Carrara of Trinidad" having supplied the building material for many structures ranging from government buildings to tombstones. The blue limestone of Laventille has been used in the development of the capital city for centuries. It has found its way into the walls of most of the prominent buildings of the 19th and early 20th centuries, including:
�2 Governor's (President's) House (1876)
�2 Stollmeyer's Castle (1904)
�2 Police Headquarters (1892)
�2 St James Barracks (1827)
�2 Royal Gaol (1812)
�2 Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception (1816-32)
It even found its way down south in the walls of the 1873 San Fernando Courthouse. When Port-of-Spain was levelled by fire in 1895, rebuilt structures had stone walls between them which meant that if ever fire swept town again, the walls would prevent the spread of it between the largely wooden buildings. Some of these walls may still be seen today on Henry and upper Frederick streets.
The stone was easy to work, handsome and durable. The raw material was extricated in slabs, and carted down to the building sites where skilled stonemasons would cut and trim smaller pieces which fit together like jigsaw puzzles. A close inspection of the aforementioned buildings would give one an idea of how solidly these stones were fitted, as many were set without mortar.
Laventille limestone was used in the reclamation of the Port-of-Spain harbour (a periodic exercise beginning in 1831 and ending in the 1930s) and the development of Sea Lots.
Sea Lots was an initiative to offer cheap waterfront properties to encourage commerce. Stone groins were laid out in a grid in the shallow water which formed square "lots." These were sold to people who would then undertake by their own expense to fill in the squares of sea. The majority of these lots were filled using Laventille crushed limestone.
Thousands of donkey-cart loads were contracted and the quarry operators (Lee Lum and Co, Gerold and Urich, Geo Huggins and Co, Smith Bros, etc) made a mint. Such was the demand for this "blue metal" that a set of rails was installed running to the waterfront from the quarries and rail trucks drawn by mules and oxen would take loads of gravel down to Sea Lots.
The Royal Gaol in Port-of-Spain maintained a quarry operation here, too. Prisoners in a "chain gang" were used as labour to mine the precious stone which was used for road building and other public works. The last great use of Laventille limestone was in the construction of the Churchill-Roosevelt Highway in 1942 which was the mighty road built by the American Army to ease transit between Port-of-Spain and its base at Fort Read in Cumuto.
Today, signs of the old quarries–the rails, the cuttings and the crushers–have mostly disappeared unless one notices the scars on upper Quarry Street, named for the now defunct operations.
