AN­GE­LO JE­DIDI­AH

Re­porter

an­ge­lo.je­didi­ah@guardian.co.tt

Every day, thou­sands of Trin­bag­o­ni­ans rush through the streets of Port-of-Spain. For some, it’s a dai­ly hus­tle for work. For oth­ers, it’s sim­ply home. And while lo­cals might walk past these streets with­out a sec­ond thought, vis­i­tors are of­ten left in awe of the grand ar­chi­tec­ture of many his­toric sites.

Be­hind these struc­tures lie decades of plan­ning, deep in­spi­ra­tion and sto­ries of sur­vival. Three, in par­tic­u­lar, are among the his­toric land­marks that de­fine the sky­line of Port-of-Spain.

THE RED HOUSE

The Red House sits promi­nent­ly on Aber­crom­by Street, and it may be over­looked due to the po­lit­i­cal fren­zies and de­bates that take place in­side. But as the largest Par­lia­ment build­ing in the Caribbean re­gion, it cer­tain­ly com­mands at­ten­tion, and its strik­ing colour makes it im­pos­si­ble to ig­nore.

The build­ing’s jour­ney be­gan in the 1840s, un­der­go­ing nu­mer­ous de­sign al­ter­ations over the decades. Its fa­mous crim­son hue was ac­tu­al­ly a de­lib­er­ate choice made lat­er in the cen­tu­ry to com­mem­o­rate Queen Vic­to­ria’s Di­a­mond Ju­bilee.

How­ev­er, the cur­rent struc­ture that stands to­day is large­ly the re­sult of a 1907 re­con­struc­tion af­ter it was de­stroyed by fire dur­ing the 1903 Wa­ter Ri­ots.

Decades lat­er, dur­ing the 1990 at­tempt­ed coup, the Red House be­came the epi­cen­tre of the trau­mat­ic na­tion­al siege. In re­ports pub­lished af­ter the cat­a­stro­phe, the Trinidad Guardian not­ed that the build­ing es­caped ma­jor de­struc­tion, sus­tain­ing on­ly mi­nor struc­tur­al dam­age, though some his­tor­i­cal arte­facts and pieces of art­work were af­fect­ed.

To­day, the Red House is guard­ed by a ma­jes­tic wrought-iron gate sur­round­ing its perime­ter. But at one point, there was an open, un­ob­struct­ed and peace­ful view of its splen­dour at eye lev­el. Then, it was guard­ed on­ly by a pick­et fence, flow­er­ing plants and trees. This was, un­doubt­ed­ly, a gen­tler era, when se­cu­ri­ty and dis­or­der were not con­stant con­cerns.

TWIN TOW­ERS

Dom­i­nat­ing the sky­line on In­de­pen­dence Square, the Twin Tow­ers, of­fi­cial­ly named the Er­ic Williams Fi­nan­cial Com­plex, stand as an icon­ic mon­u­ment to the mas­sive eco­nom­ic boom T&T once en­joyed.

It was one of for­mer prime min­is­ter George Cham­bers’ first ma­jor ac­com­plish­ments af­ter be­ing thrust in­to lead­er­ship fol­low­ing the death of the na­tion’s found­ing fa­ther and first prime min­is­ter, Dr Er­ic Williams. While Cham­bers chose to forge his own style, he al­so chose this project to pay homage to his pre­de­ces­sor. And just as he sought to bring sta­bil­i­ty to the coun­try’s econ­o­my, the tow­ers were built with a re­port­ed­ly re­li­able earth­quake-re­sis­tant de­sign. Once the tallest build­ing in T&T, the com­plex now ranks third, stand­ing at 302 feet (sur­passed by In­ter­na­tion­al Wa­ter­front Tow­ers D and C).

Nev­er­the­less, it re­mains among the tallest build­ings in the re­gion, a tow­er­ing sym­bol of the na­tion’s ar­chi­tec­tur­al and fi­nan­cial ca­pa­bil­i­ties.

PORT-OF-SPAIN LIGHT­HOUSE

And while lo­cals de­sirous of trav­el­ling the world may choose to make a stop in Italy to mar­vel at its Lean­ing Tow­er of Pisa, thou­sands of Trin­bag­o­ni­ans pass by their very own ar­chi­tec­tur­al quirk every day with­out even notic­ing. Sit­u­at­ed south of In­de­pen­dence Square, the his­toric Port-of-Spain Light­house (orig­i­nal­ly named the St Vin­cent Jet­ty Light­house) qui­et­ly leans five de­grees to the west.

The light­house was built in 1842 to serve the har­bour of the time. Over the gen­er­a­tions, how­ev­er, land recla­ma­tion and ur­ban de­vel­op­ment projects grad­u­al­ly pushed the coast­line far­ther away, leav­ing the once-sea­side struc­ture sur­round­ed by as­phalt, con­crete and the con­stant flow of heavy traf­fic. Al­though thou­sands of mo­torists and passers-by trav­el past it each day, few seem to no­tice the his­toric land­mark’s sub­tle lean.

In 1982, the Trinidad Guardian re­port­ed a pub­lic out­cry for the his­toric land­mark to be re­stored, as it had been se­vere­ly ne­glect­ed. Its base was de­faced and sur­round­ed by home­less peo­ple. In 1986, a pas­sion­ate group of lo­cal busi­ness­men led by the promi­nent tex­tile mer­chant Jim­my Aboud stepped in to save it.

They spear­head­ed a thor­ough restora­tion, clear­ing the de­bris and ap­ply­ing a fresh coat of paint. Dur­ing the restora­tion, ex­ten­sive soil test­ing was car­ried out to de­ter­mine whether it was nec­es­sary to straight­en the tow­er. To the de­light of many, an en­gi­neer­ing sur­vey re­vealed that the foun­da­tion was per­fect­ly sta­ble, pre­serv­ing a very spe­cial piece of Port-of-Spain’s his­to­ry and unique­ness for gen­er­a­tions to come.