Kali­fa Clyne

The his­toric build­ing next to City Hall and op­po­site Wood­ford Square on Knox Street, Port-of-Spain is crum­bling both on the out­side and in the mem­o­ries of most cit­i­zens. That is how one passer­by, Jerome Hen­ry, de­scribed the now emp­ty and aban­doned build­ing known as the Her­itage Li­brary.

It's wit­nessed more than a cen­tu­ry of change, but now it's most­ly ig­nored, oc­ca­sion­al­ly arous­ing the at­ten­tion of a cam­era-wield­ing vis­i­tor to the city. The build­ing is now on­ly used as a stor­age fa­cil­i­ty for the Na­tion­al Li­brary and In­for­ma­tion Sys­tems (Nalis) and to pro­vide shade from the mid-day sun.

The iron gates re­main chained and locked, and the sight of peo­ple thumb­ing through books and search­ing shelves is a dis­tant mem­o­ry. Pres­i­dent of the Na­tion­al Trust Vel Lewis says the li­brary build­ing, though di­lap­i­dat­ed in cer­tain places, is "struc­tural­ly sound".

In a tele­phone in­ter­view on Mon­day, Lewis said the Na­tion­al Trust was putting to­geth­er a pro­pos­al to have the Her­itage Li­brary re­stored and prop­er­ly utilised in the near fu­ture. "We are not quite ready yet, as we await a di­lap­i­da­tion sur­vey and some fur­ther re­search from Cana­di­an pro­fes­sor of ar­chi­tec­ture Yvan Caz­abon," Lewis said.

Caz­abon was re­cent­ly in Trinidad to do a study of the Her­itage Li­brary with a group of stu­dents. Dur­ing that time he pre­sent­ed a book ti­tled A Tale of Two Hous­es, which rep­re­sent­ed the find­ings of a study of two oth­er his­toric Port-of-Spain build­ings-the Boissiere House on Queen's Park West and a house owned by the Fi­gari fam­i­ly on Pic­cadil­ly Street in Port-of-Spain.

Lewis said he was not yet ready to give de­tails of the pro­pos­al but added that the Her­itage Li­brary build­ing was "not in very bad con­di­tion". "It wouldn't cost as much as Mille Fleurs to re­store," he said. Ren­o­va­tions to Mille Fleurs, one of the his­toric build­ings that make up the Mag­nif­i­cent Sev­en on Queen's Park West, will cost an es­ti­mat­ed $32 mil­lion.

Lewis said restora­tion need­ed at the li­brary would most­ly in­volve cos­met­ic work, fix­ing leaks in the roof, re­plac­ing rot­ted floor­boards and erad­i­cat­ing an in­fes­ta­tion of pi­geons.