SHAR­LENE RAM­PER­SAD

Se­nior In­ves­tiga­tive Re­porter

shar­lene.ram­per­sad@guardian.co.tt

The Na­tion­al Trust of Trinidad and To­ba­go is ad­vo­cat­ing for con­trol of the Knowsley Build­ing, which it says has stood emp­ty for the past three years af­ter hous­ing the Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency and the Na­tion­al Op­er­a­tions Cen­tre.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, coun­cil mem­ber Mark Fran­co said the Trust has done year­ly mon­i­tor­ing ex­er­cis­es at Knowsley over the last three years.

De­signed and com­plet­ed in 1904 by Scot­tish firm Tay­lor and Gillies for mer­chant William Gor­don Gor­don for $100,000, Knowsley stands as one of the last re­main­ing colo­nial man­sions of its kind in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

The build­ing com­bines im­port­ed yel­low bricks and hand-hewn lo­cal Laven­tille blue lime­stone, fea­tur­ing ground-floor ve­ran­dahs paved with Ital­ian mar­ble, a grand stair­case of Guyanese pur­ple­heart wood, and Parisian plas­ter ceil­ings with ges­so work by an Ital­ian crafts­man whose artistry al­so adorns the Red House coun­cil cham­ber.

Ear­ly 20th-cen­tu­ry ac­counts high­light­ed its unique aes­thet­ic, with one for­eign ad­mir­er com­par­ing its sil­hou­ette to the witch’s house in the fa­ble Hansel and Gre­tel and an­oth­er de­scrib­ing the prop­er­ty as hav­ing “an al­most ec­cle­si­as­ti­cal air of con­vic­tion.”

In June 1956, the Gov­ern­ment ac­quired the city-block prop­er­ty for $250,000 to house ex­ec­u­tive of­fices for the Min­istry of For­eign Af­fairs, tran­si­tion­ing the es­tate from a pri­vate elite res­i­dence in­to state ad­min­is­tra­tive space.

Un­der a project man­aged by the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny of Trinidad and To­ba­go (Ude­cott), Knowsley un­der­went struc­tur­al restora­tion and adap­tive reuse to con­vert the his­toric res­i­den­tial land­mark in­to state ad­min­is­tra­tive of­fices.

The com­plet­ed project, which re­stored the main build­ing and base­ment to fea­ture re­cep­tion ar­eas, ex­ec­u­tive of­fice suites, and tai­lored sur­round­ing land­scap­ing with a wa­ter fea­ture, was of­fi­cial­ly hand­ed over to the Min­istry of For­eign Af­fairs in 2011.

‘Put Knowsley to use’

Knowsley is a Grade I list­ed prop­er­ty of in­ter­est, which the Trust de­fines as: “Prop­er­ty in which there should be no change, nor al­ter­ation to its shape or form, nor in or up­on any ma­te­r­i­al ob­ject, plant or oth­er thing that may de­form or de­face the prop­er­ty.”

Fran­co says the Trust, which is legal­ly man­dat­ed to doc­u­ment prop­er­ties of in­ter­est and con­duct rou­tine mon­i­tor­ing in­spec­tions of list­ed her­itage sites, not­ed re­pair and main­te­nance works to be done at Knowsley dur­ing its re­cent vis­its.

“It’s large­ly main­te­nance is­sues or is­sues caused by the re­quire­ment for main­te­nance. Again, like we told you last time, that’s not an un­usu­al sit­u­a­tion, es­pe­cial­ly with some of the old his­toric build­ings, the de­tails of which re­quire a bit of at­ten­tion,” Fran­co said.

He said the Trust be­lieves that these his­toric build­ings fare bet­ter when they are put to use.

Fran­co said Knowsley can be used for a mu­se­um, as an event space or as an of­fice build­ing.

“It could be a con­fer­ence cen­tre, re­tail, cof­fee shop type thing, restau­rant; you’ll have to man­age sort of like the cook­ing fa­cil­i­ties... Once the use is com­pat­i­ble with the build­ing, it is, and that, for ex­am­ple, if you have like a restau­rant and you have cook­ing, that’s zoned in an area that can pro­vide safe­ty and not im­pact the her­itage build­ing,” Fran­co said.

He ref­er­enced the Trust’s man­age­ment of one of the Mag­nif­i­cent Sev­en build­ings, Mille Fleur.

“I think un­der our man­age­ment, you know, you can just look at what we’ve done with Mille Fleur. Mille Fleur was flat on the ground, prac­ti­cal­ly.

“It had been aban­doned for so many years and left in a ter­ri­ble state where it was rec­om­mend­ed by min­istries to be de­mol­ished.”

Fran­co said Mille Fleur has been re­stored and is be­ing used as a rev­enue-earn­ing event space.

“So you take a build­ing that was des­ig­nat­ed to be de­mol­ished, ac­tu­al­ly re­store it, and then have it func­tion­ing ac­tive­ly, ef­fec­tive­ly, and able to, you’d say it’s able to pay for it­self through the ac­tiv­i­ties that we have en­gaged in or en­gage with here, the events we hold, and to there­fore have a lev­el of self-sus­tain­ment that is sig­nif­i­cant.

“So not a bur­den on the state as such. And I think there are op­por­tu­ni­ties (for Knowsley.)”

He said the pub­lic is at­tract­ed to sites like Mille Fleur and Knowsley be­cause of the his­to­ry and nos­tal­gia as­so­ci­at­ed with those sites.

“A lot of our her­itage build­ings, the old­er ones, have sto­ries be­hind them, his­to­ries be­hind them, some of them that may have been born out of some lev­el of ex­clu­siv­i­ty and ex­clu­sion, and we have the op­por­tu­ni­ties to write new sto­ries as­so­ci­at­ed with them and Knowsley is one of those that presents that op­por­tu­ni­ty,” Fran­co said.

His­to­ri­an wants in­ter­est in pre­serv­ing his­tor­i­cal sites

His­to­ri­an Dr Jerome Teelucks­ingh agrees that Knowsley should be put to use.

He said the State’s ac­qui­si­tion of the build­ing was not just a trans­fer of a deed.

“It had deep­er mean­ings as it trans­formed the ur­ban land­scape and gave us a sense of be­long­ing. It ap­peared to re­duce the class di­vi­sions as hous­es of the elite, up­per class were now owned by the cit­i­zens of T&T,” Teelucks­ingh said.

He agreed that his­toric build­ings de­te­ri­o­rate faster when left emp­ty but said the Gov­ern­ment must care­ful­ly man­age ac­cess to Knowsley to en­sure it is not dam­aged.

He sug­gest­ed ed­u­ca­tion­al tours for stu­dents and paid tours for tourists, so the prop­er­ty can gen­er­ate rev­enue.

“The gov­ern­ment has to close­ly mon­i­tor the pub­lic ac­cess to en­sure that these his­toric man­sions are nei­ther des­e­crat­ed nor dam­aged. For ex­am­ple, I be­lieve that events such as all-in­clu­sive fetes and par­ties in­crease the chances of dam­ag­ing ar­chi­tec­ture.”

Teelucks­ingh be­lieves that build­ings like Knowsley fall in­to a pat­tern of ren­o­va­tion and de­te­ri­o­ra­tion be­cause there is not enough in­ter­est in preser­va­tion.

He said many be­lieve there will al­ways be mon­ey avail­able to re­pair these build­ings.

“We live in a strange so­ci­ety; my plead­ing for greater preser­va­tion would be ig­nored.

“How­ev­er, if I make a joke or out­ra­geous sug­ges­tion that the name be changed to ‘Brown­hall’ or ‘Black­hall’ or that the colour of White­hall be changed, then there will be in­creased in­ter­est on so­cial me­dia as per­sons sud­den­ly be­come pa­tri­ots and ‘ex­perts’ in the build­ing’s his­to­ry and preser­va­tion!” Teelucks­ingh added.