In Trinidad, a Painted Lady in Distress
By David Shaftel (New York Times)IN the evening, when the heat breaks and a walk around Queen’s Park Savannah — the sugar-estate-cum-public-park here — becomes a reasonable proposition, the visitor is struck by the diversity of architecture along its perimeter, where commercial buildings sit incongruously amid Victorian structures. Even the Magnificent Seven, a row of famous colonial buildings including a French Baroque mansion and a castle inspired by the one at Balmoral, in Scotland, represent a random assortment of styles, in various states of repair.
But perhaps no building on the Savannah is more emblematic of Trinidad’s chaotic history than the Boissiere House, a 1904 cottage as majestic as any of the mansions and a rare example of turn-of-the-century Trinidadian architecture.
Like something the Brothers Grimm might have conceived, the house has a large gabled dormer separating two Chinese pagoda-like pavilions, marble steps, and intricate fretwork. As John Newel Lewis, an English architect, wrote in “Ajoupa,” his 1983 book on Trinidadian architecture, “The whole effect is magical and nostalgic with mysterious colors and a melancholy air. The house is an example of Trinidad’s visual heritage at its best. The melancholia will pass.”
Recently, though, the melancholia has intensified. In February, a sign appeared in front of the house, which belongs to Greta Elliott, a great-granddaughter of the man who built it, announcing that it was for sale. Since then, the house, which is still for sale, has come to symbolize the rapid disappearance of historic architecture here, provoking a sometimes heated debate among residents about the merits of historic preservation, a conversation that has come late to Trinidad.
The last decade has seen the destruction of a number of the island’s historic buildings, including the 1904 Union Club, which was torn down in 1998 and replaced by a 21-story office tower; the Coblentz House, an 1877 estate near the Savannah, demolished the following year; and a turn-of-the-century gingerbread house restored in 1954 by Colin Laird, Trinidad’s most prominent contemporary architect, which was torn down in 2005 and replaced by a faux French chateau. When the Boissiere House was listed for sale, many feared a similar outcome, given its location on prime real estate.
Nicholas Laughlin, a blogger here and the editor of the Caribbean Review of Books, a literary journal, created a Web site (saveboissierehouse.org) in an effort to raise public awareness of the house. “The Boissiere House is part of the imaginative reality of anyone who has lived in Port of Spain,” he said, “and I had become horrified by buildings that I thought would always be there, that are an indelible part of the city, disappearing.”
His campaign drew some attention in the local press, but the widespread outcry he hoped for never materialized. He considers it a minor victory that the house has not yet been sold and demolished. Trinidad’s weak preservation laws won’t protect it if it does sell, he said, and given the asking price — the house was appraised at around $16 million in Trinidad and Tobago dollars ($2.6 million), but was listed at $63 million in local dollars (about $10.3 million) and then reduced to $35 million in local dollars ($5.7 million) — the most likely buyer would be a developer interested in the land.
Even so, the preservation campaign Mr. Laughlin initiated, which has been taken up by other intellectuals on the island, may have become an impediment to the sale. “At first a lot of businessmen were interested in buying the house,” said AnnMarie Aboud, the listing agent and the owner’s spokeswoman. (Speaking through Ms. Aboud, Ms. Elliott refused to be interviewed for this article.) “But there’s been too much politics. They all said, ‘We’re not touching it.’ ”
COMMISSIONED by C. E. H. Boissičre, a merchant descended from a French Creole planter who settled in Trinidad in the late 18th century and an African slave, the four-bedroom house was modern for its day. With 14-foot ceilings and transoms that allowed air to flow through the rooms, it was well suited to its setting. The fretwork helped to diffuse light and offered protection from the rain, and the louvered windows had large sills that could hold ice to cool incoming breezes.
Despite the house’s architectural innovations, though, its appeal is lost on many people here, a state of affairs that Gerard Besson, 66, a local historian, attributes to a deep-seated local resistance to preservation. Unlike Barbados, which has a wealthy preservation-minded expatriate population, or even Tobago, Trinidad’s sister island, Trinidad isn’t dependent on tourism, so there was never a need to promote — or preserve — the colonial architecture, he said. (Trinidad’s economy is driven by oil, which was discovered here in the 1860s, as well as natural gas.)
But the resistance to preservation reflects more than just a lack of incentive, Mr. Besson said. In 1962, when the country gained its independence from England, he said, 90 percent of the architecture in Port of Spain built during the late colonial era was intact. Seen through the prism of independence politics, those buildings became symbols of an unpleasant past, with negative associations with slavery and colonialism.
“After independence, our built heritage was left to go to rot,” Mr. Besson said. He said that he once gave tours of historic buildings here, but that he has stopped in recent years because there aren’t enough buildings left.
There are some who believe that attitudes may finally be changing, though. Rudylynn Roberts, 57, an architect with experience in historic restoration and a founding member of Citizens for Conservation, a preservation lobbying group, began advocating for a National Trust in 1979. (Jamaica and Barbados, by comparison, established National Trusts in 1958 and 1961, respectively.) It took more than a decade, but legislation was drafted in 1991 and passed in 1999.
“There’s more enthusiasm for preservation now,” she said. “Thirty years ago, people were fairly ambivalent.” Ms. Roberts, who has lectured in local primary and secondary schools, said she often finds students more receptive than teachers, who are still influenced by the idea that old buildings are “part of the heritage that we wanted to shake off.”
Other signs of interest in preservation can be seen in the small but increasing number of homeowners pursuing their own projects.
Less than a mile away from the Boissiere House, in the Woodbrook neighborhood, Bernard Mackay, 62, and his wife, Rosemary, 60, have converted their 1929 home into a bed-and-breakfast. Mr. Mackay, an architect whose grandfather emigrated from Scotland in 1903, said that when they bought the home in 1989 it was derelict. They paid $140,000 in local dollars (about $22,900) and spent three times that amount restoring it.
Like the Boissiere House, the Mackays’ house has elaborate fretwork framing the veranda, most of it still intact, and outbuildings that housed the original kitchen, toilets and baths, which Mr. Mackay replaced with a modern office. The Mackays insulated the unfinished attic and converted it into bedrooms for their three children. A kitchen added onto the back of the house in the 1950s was replaced, and some of the transoms were closed off for the sake of privacy. But the restoration, which took around 10 years, was otherwise faithful to the house.
Next door, a 62-year-old fashion designer who goes by the name Meiling lives in a gingerbread home she restored, which she believes was built in the early 1900s. “There always seems to be something to be done,” she said. “Each rainy season, you discover new leaks.”
Her renovations, which she said cost three times what she paid for the house (a figure she would not reveal), included updating the floors, roof and kitchen, and replacing the outbuildings with a clothing workshop.
Most preservationists here agree that such adaptive reuse is the most practical way to save these houses. Vel Lewis, the chairman of the National Trust of Trinidad and Tobago, said he favors government grants for homeowners to restore historic homes and a registry of protected buildings. Dossiers on the first 30 recommended for inclusion in such a registry have been made and a fine has been proposed for buyers who alter them. Critics say that the trust is stymied by government inertia and a lack of political will and that the fine, $5,000 (about $820), is too low.
Regarding the Boissiere House, Mr. Lewis would say only that the National Trust was trying to discourage the owner from selling to someone who would knock it down, and that the owner has been “cooperative.”
The owner of the Boissiere House has done little to preserve it, but the house is still in relatively good condition, something that can’t be said for many of the island’s historic structures.
“We are getting to the point where it will be too late,” said Andrew Lawrence, a restoration contractor. A number of the old homes in Port of Spain date to the early 1900s, he said. Without attention, after about 70 or 80 years, deterioration sets in; if a house is vacant, it is particularly vulnerable to salt accumulation, wet rot, dry rot, termites and other tropical maladies.
While preservationists say that a number of old houses are still salvageable, it is often cheaper to demolish them and build new ones. Mr. Lawrence estimates that a faithful restoration costs about $250 a square foot.
Confronted with that expense, “the perception that it is simply too late” to save a house, and the desire to avoid public outcry, owners often “make the decision to demolish the building under the cover of night,” he said. “They see it as a burden rather than a treasure.”