Ryan Ba­choo

Lead Ed­i­tor-News­gath­er­ing

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

Amid the hus­tle and bus­tle of Up­per High Street in San Fer­nan­do, where taxi dri­vers could be heard court­ing pas­sen­gers for Princes Town and Gulf City Mall, the his­tor­i­cal red build­ing sits dor­mant in the heart of the city.

Red sheets of gal­vanise have been erect­ed along its fence, but they hard­ly hide the de­te­ri­o­ra­tion of the Carnegie Free Li­brary. Since Jan­u­ary 2015, the li­brary has been closed “due to nat­ur­al con­di­tions and ex­po­sure to the el­e­ments”, ac­cord­ing to the Na­tion­al Li­brary and In­for­ma­tion Sys­tem Au­thor­i­ty (NALIS), which is in charge of the fa­cil­i­ty.

As our cam­eras start­ed rolling in front of the tall, red build­ing, passers-by be­came in­quis­i­tive as to what sto­ry we were cov­er­ing. One taxi dri­ver fill­ing his car to go to Gulf City Mall told us, “It’s about time they do some­thing about that build­ing. It’s an eye­sore in the mid­dle of the city.”

Once the hub of in­tel­lec­tu­al ac­tiv­i­ty in the south­lands, the li­brary has been no­madic for the last 10 years.

From Carnegie, with love

For near­ly a cen­tu­ry, the Carnegie Free Li­brary had served San Fer­nan­do and en­vi­rons. It was borne out of the need for such a ser­vice in the South. In 1909, San Fer­nan­do may­or JD Hob­son iden­ti­fied the need for a free pub­lic li­brary in the city. He sought fi­nan­cial as­sis­tance from Scot­tish-born Amer­i­can phil­an­thropist An­drew Carnegie. The Scots­man liked the idea and in­vest­ed in the project un­til its fruition in 1919.

For 96 years, the build­ing would help mould south­ern minds. No doubt na­tion­al lead­ers who emerged from south Trinidad, like Patrick Man­ning, Bas­deo Pan­day, Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, and Noor Has­sanali, among oth­ers, would have used that li­brary at one time or an­oth­er.

It is al­so the cen­tre point for sev­er­al schools in the area, in­clud­ing Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege, Na­pari­ma Girls’ High School, San Fer­nan­do Boys’ RC, St Joseph’s Con­vent, and Na­pari­ma Col­lege.

How­ev­er, restor­ing the icon­ic build­ing is not as sim­ple as it may seem.

Un­der the Na­tion­al Trust of Trinidad and To­ba­go Act, the Carnegie Free Li­brary build­ing is list­ed as a Grade 2 Prop­er­ty of In­ter­est as pub­lished in the Gazette No 82 of 2015, which states that ma­te­r­i­al change may be per­mit­ted, pro­vid­ed that sim­i­lar­i­ty is main­tained in all re­spects of its orig­i­nal com­po­si­tion, shape and form.

“To this end, the li­brary is sig­nif­i­cant to the his­to­ry of the city of San Fer­nan­do and thus, its restora­tion is nec­es­sary to en­sure the preser­va­tion of our cul­tur­al his­to­ry,” NALIS told the Sun­day Guardian in a state­ment.

No home for the li­brary

When the build­ing was deemed to be un­safe for oc­cu­pan­cy and sub­se­quent­ly closed to the pub­lic in 2015, find­ing a new space proved chal­leng­ing to NALIS.

That same year, ser­vices were re­lo­cat­ed to rent­ed fa­cil­i­ties sit­u­at­ed at the Cor­ner of Prince of Wales and Cof­fee streets. How­ev­er, NALIS said it was forced to seek more af­ford­able rental op­tions.

In 2021, the ser­vice col­lab­o­rat­ed with the San Fer­nan­do City Cor­po­ra­tion to es­tab­lish the San Fer­nan­do West In­di­an Ref­er­ence Li­brary on Har­ris Prom­e­nade. How­ev­er, in Au­gust this year, they were forced to de­com­mis­sion the build­ing af­ter the city said it want­ed back its prop­er­ty to ful­fil the build­ing’s orig­i­nal man­date.

San Fer­nan­do May­or Robert Par­ris told the Sun­day Guardian, “We were go­ing to put the po­lice post here on the prom­e­nade so that they have a per­fect eye-in-the-sky kind of sce­nario, so that they are see­ing per­fect­ly down High Street, they are see­ing per­fect­ly down Har­ris Prom­e­nade and Mu­cu­rapo Street; that’s why the build­ing was de­signed in the man­ner it was.”

In 2022, NALIS col­lab­o­rat­ed with the Min­istry of Sport and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment to open the San Fer­nan­do North Com­mu­ni­ty Li­brary at the near­by Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre.

It’s rough­ly a 15-minute walk from the old build­ing, which re­mains the on­ly li­brary fa­cil­i­ty in the city.

How­ev­er, there were much grander plans for the Carnegie Free Li­brary that stretched back to 1995.

Ac­cord­ing to NALIS, five floors at a to­tal of 3,214 square me­tres at the Chancery Lane Com­plex in San Fer­nan­do were al­lo­cat­ed for the pro­vi­sion of mod­ern li­brary in­fra­struc­ture. The floors as­signed com­prised the Chil­dren’s Li­brary, Adult and Young Adult Lend­ing Ser­vices, Gen­er­al Ref­er­ence Ser­vices, and Ad­min­is­tra­tive and Gen­er­al Ser­vices.

NALIS start­ed out­fit­ting the floors when they were or­dered to cease work in 2010. A de­ci­sion was tak­en to re­pur­pose the fa­cil­i­ty in­to what is to­day the San Fer­nan­do Teach­ing Hos­pi­tal.

A new chap­ter?

De­spite the 106-year-old build­ing be­ing in a derelict state with no clear in­ten­tion for its re­fur­bish­ment, there are plans for the Carnegie Free Li­brary. Par­ris re­vealed to the Sun­day Guardian that he has had con­ver­sa­tions with San Fer­nan­do West MP Dr Michael Dowlath, who is al­so the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter. He stat­ed, “Dr Dowlath and I speak very of­ten, and Dr Dowlath would have in­di­cat­ed that he would have want­ed there to be an in­sti­tute for AI re­search, which I think could be some­thing that we could look in­to, but cer­tain­ly I think that icon­ic build­ing that means so much to us San Fer­nan­di­ans–some­thing needs to be done. It can’t just be hoard­ed up and left that way for that long; some­thing needs to be done.”

In a dig, Par­ris added, “Cer­tain­ly, I know if that build­ing was in Port-of-Spain, some­thing would have been done. You’ll re­mem­ber when it is that the li­brary in Port-of-Spain was hoard­ed up for a long time, and now we have the pub­lic li­brary that’s open, so some­thing needs to be done.”

When the Sun­day Guardian vis­it­ed Dr Dowlath at a prize­giv­ing cer­e­mo­ny and ex­hi­bi­tion of art con­test at UWI’s Cen­tre for Lan­guage Learn­ing on Sep­tem­ber 26, he told us the li­brary falls un­der the re­mit of Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion and Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence Do­minic Smith, and he wouldn’t want to speak out of turn.

The Sun­day Guardian spoke to Smith out­side of Par­lia­ment. He told us, “We have been look­ing at all of the li­brary fa­cil­i­ties. What we have com­ing soon is the board of NALIS, which will give us a bit more in­sight in­to the op­er­a­tions, etc. And cer­tain­ly, we are aware of the sit­u­a­tion at the San Fer­nan­do Li­brary, and we are tak­ing de­ci­sions and steps to see how we can rec­ti­fy that as soon as pos­si­ble.”

How­ev­er, for­mer San Fer­nan­do West MP Faris Al-Rawi told us out­side Par­lia­ment re­cent­ly that a more holis­tic plan for the city has been quashed. He said, “The San Fer­nan­do Li­brary is an im­por­tant point. I grew up there, but it was part of a much larg­er plan for the Wa­ter­front de­vel­op­ment. The Wa­ter­front de­vel­op­ment in­clud­ed a loop sys­tem for all up High Street and the prom­e­nade, and it was part of lo­cal eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment which the Min­istry of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment was cham­pi­oning. Every­thing has died.”

Mean­while, NALIS said it re­quires ap­prox­i­mate­ly $50 mil­lion to re­store the fa­cil­i­ties in keep­ing with the orig­i­nal com­po­si­tion, af­ter which some of the Pres­i­den­tial and Prime Min­is­te­r­i­al Col­lec­tions will be housed at the Carnegie Free Li­brary. That in­cludes the col­lec­tions of Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, for­mer PMs Patrick Man­ning and Bas­deo Pan­day, and for­mer pres­i­dents George Maxwell Richards, Noor Has­sanali, and An­tho­ny Car­mona. All south­ern­ers by birth, it is hoped their lega­cies can be pre­served in one cen­tral lo­ca­tion from which they came.