Michelle Loubon

Promi­nent lo­cal his­to­ri­ans Prof Brid­get Br­ere­ton and Michael An­tho­ny say restora­tion is the on­ly is­sue that should be de­bat­ed with re­gard to Pres­i­dent's House, Queen's Park Sa­van­nah, Port-of-Spain. On May 15, the roof had col­lapsed. On May 18, then Works Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert said Pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards and his wife Dr Jean Ramjohn-Richards had been asked to va­cate the house with im­me­di­ate ef­fect. Dur­ing their stay, they had host­ed In­de­pen­dence Day awards and so­cial events. Once more, Pres­i­dent's House, one of the Mag­nif­i­cent Sev­en build­ings, has been the sub­ject of at­ten­tion. On Fri­day Cheryl Black­man, Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary in the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port, said a con­sul­tant was ex­pect­ed to ar­rive from Scot­land yes­ter­day to de­ter­mine what should be its fate.

She had made this com­ment at the open­ing of Pow­der Mag­a­zine Walkover El­e­va­tors at Phase 11, Pow­der Mag­a­zine, Diego Mar­tin. Br­ere­ton said, "It should not be a mat­ter for de­bate. It's an im­por­tant part of our built her­itage and the on­ly is­sues that must be de­bat­ed would be how best to re­store it. "There are se­ri­ous is­sues when it comes to an his­toric build­ing which is in poor or bad con­di­tion. The is­sue is how best to re­store and ren­o­vate this build­ing. That is the on­ly is­sue that should be de­bat­ed," added Br­ere­ton. She al­so said it was "a tragedy" the build­ing was al­lowed to get in­to the state it was now in. "It is one of the very few sur­viv­ing grand 19th cen­tu­ry build­ings. It was orig­i­nal­ly built for colo­nial gov­er­nors, and, of course, the na­tion in­her­it­ed it at In­de­pen­dence (1962) and it is a na­tion­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to pre­serve and main­tain it," added Br­ere­ton.

Br­ere­ton had al­ways ex­er­cised her so­cial con­science. In 2007, she head­ed a com­mit­tee man­dat­ed to change the name of the Trin­i­ty Cross to a more ap­pro­pri­ate­ly named award–Or­der of the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go. In 2003, Br­ere­ton and 46 promi­nent cit­i­zens had pe­ti­tioned then Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning to re­con­sid­er his Cab­i­net de­ci­sion to re­lo­cate Par­lia­ment.

An­tho­ny pre­pared to march

An­tho­ny, too, said, every con­cert­ed ef­fort should be made to re­store and not de­mol­ish the ed­i­fice. "I will march in the street in protest if the house has to be de­mol­ished. Peo­ple will join me there. The on­ly is­sue is restora­tion," he said. He said the House should be re­stored based on the ar­chi­tec­ture of the times and fol­low the orig­i­nal Long­den lines. He breathed a sigh of re­lief that they were get­ting a con­sul­tant from Eng­land. "In Eng­land, there are things built af­ter the 11th cen­tu­ry. If they are get­ting some­body from Eng­land, then they are con­scious of how dif­fi­cult it would be to re­store it. There are im­por­tant fea­tures like how to build the roof.

If they are tak­ing tests, I sup­pose they would get some­body who is cog­nisant of the pe­ri­od in which the house was built."

An­tho­ny said they should seek the ad­vice of his­to­ri­an Br­ere­ton and oth­er ex­perts who are knowl­edge­able about the ar­chi­tec­ture of the times. An­tho­ny al­so lament­ed the state of de­cay that had caused the roof to come tum­bling down. "I don't know how they didn't see the cracks. Things don't hap­pen just like that. There are signs the roof is com­ing down. There are some won­der­ful things in the Botan­ic Gar­dens and one hopes they are pre­served," added An­tho­ny. Mu­si­col­o­gist Pat Bish­op and An­gel­la Per­sad, Pres­i­dent of the Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce, had lament­ed the col­lapse of Pres­i­dent's House. Bish­op raised her con­cerns while de­liv­er­ing the fea­ture ad­dress at the Cam­sel/Matt awards at As­sump­tion Me­dia Cen­tre, Bethany Room, Mar­aval, on June 11. Per­sad aired her griev­ance at the sec­ond an­nu­al Caribbean fa­cil­i­ties man­age­ment and main­te­nance con­fer­ence at Hy­att Re­gency Ho­tel, Wright­son Road, Port-of-Spain, on June 30.

About Pres­i­dent's House

An ex­cerpt from An­tho­ny's His­toric Land­marks of Trinidad on Pres­i­dent's House: "Once known as Gov­ern­ment House, it was built be­tween 1873 and 1876. It is the fifth of the of­fi­cial gov­er­nor's res­i­dences. The first gov­er­nor to live there was Sir Hen­ry Turn­er Irv­ing. The house was de­signed by a Mr Fer­gu­son, and is built of lo­cal blue lime­stone from the Pica­dil­ly and Laven­tille quar­ries in south-east Port-of-Spain. "It is com­mon­ly de­scribed as be­ing of "In­di­an colo­nial style" and presents three dis­tinct parts from the front: a west­ern wing with a hipped roof and arched gallery, a cen­tral block that has a gabled roof with dorm­ers, and open gal­leries with both storeys with cast-iron columns and fil­i­greed rail­ings and a tow­er-like east­ern wing with a stone para­pet. All the roofs are cov­ered in slate."