For gen­er­a­tions of South res­i­dents, the thor­ough­fares of San Fer­nan­do car­ry deep his­tor­i­cal mem­o­ry, map­ping the evo­lu­tion of the In­dus­tri­al Cap­i­tal from a colo­nial bor­ough to a thriv­ing, in­de­pen­dent city. Among the city’s most sig­nif­i­cant street trans­for­ma­tions was the re­nam­ing of Broad­way—a ma­jor artery flank­ing the west­ern ap­proach to the city cen­tre—to In­de­pen­dence Av­enue.

​​Fol­low­ing Au­gust 31, 1962, when Trinidad and To­ba­go low­ered the Union Jack and raised the Red, White, and Black, a na­tion­wide ef­fort be­gan to re­flect our new­found sov­er­eign­ty in pub­lic spaces. Much like Ma­rine Square in Port-of-Spain was re­named In­de­pen­dence Square, the San Fer­nan­do Bor­ough Coun­cil sought to com­mem­o­rate this his­toric mile­stone with­in the South­ern cap­i­tal.

​Broad­way, which served as a promi­nent thor­ough­fare con­nect­ing in­com­ing traf­fic from the south­ern and west­ern cor­ri­dors to­ward High Street and King’s Wharf, was of­fi­cial­ly re­named In­de­pen­dence Av­enue.

De­spite the for­mal name change in the ear­ly post-in­de­pen­dence era, old­er San Fer­nan­di­ans and lo­cal taxi dri­vers fre­quent­ly re­ferred to the strip as “Broad­way” for decades—a clas­sic ex­am­ple of how deep-root­ed lo­cal nomen­cla­ture per­sists across gen­er­a­tions!

​Over the decades, In­de­pen­dence Av­enue has re­mained a vi­tal artery in San Fer­nan­do:

​It con­nects seam­less traf­fic com­ing off the Rien­zi Kir­ton High­way di­rect­ly to­ward Chancery Lane and High Street.

​Street names tell the sto­ry of who we were and who we chose to be­come. The tran­si­tion from Broad­way to In­de­pen­dence Av­enue re­flects a piv­otal mo­ment in south Trinidad’s iden­ti­ty—mov­ing away from colo­nial nam­ing con­ven­tions to­ward a proud cel­e­bra­tion of na­tion­al iden­ti­ty.

—Natasha Said­wan