A tree which was firm­ly root­ed in the walls of the derelict south­ern cham­ber of the Red House on Hart Street, Port-of-Spain, has been re­moved. A pho­to­graph of the flour­ish­ing tree was pub­lished in the T&T Guardian in March. The tree was re­cent­ly re­moved as the first phase of restora­tion work on the Red House con­tin­ues.

The en­tire restora­tion project is ex­pect­ed to be com­plet­ed by De­cem­ber 2014. In an in­ter­view with the T&T Guardian in March, Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of T&T chair­man Jear­lean John said the bud­get to com­plete the job will be based on the de­signs pro­duced by the his­tor­i­cal con­sul­tant work­ing on the project, and cost­ing pro­vid­ed by the con­struc­tion man­ag­er. The Par­lia­ment moved out of the Red House last Sep­tem­ber. It now sits at the In­ter­na­tion­al Wa­ter­front Com­plex.

Facts

The Red House, which dates from 1846, was de­stroyed by fire in 1903, dur­ing the Wa­ter Ri­ots. A year lat­er, the re­build­ing process be­gan. It was opened to the pub­lic in 1907. The last PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion spent $86 mil­lion on failed ef­forts to ren­o­vate the Red House.