Khara Per­sad

An old Art De­co-style house on Queen's Park West was de­mol­ished last week­end to make room for a pri­vate car park, which is in­tend­ed to be used by con­trac­tor Ju­nior Sam­my when he vis­its the neigh­bour­ing prop­er­ty he now owns – the his­toric Boissiere House.Pres­i­dent of Cit­i­zens for Con­ser­va­tion Rudy­lynn Roberts said the de­mol­ished house rep­re­sent­ed a pe­ri­od of ar­chi­tec­ture in Trinidad which need­ed to be recog­nised.

Even though the build­ing was not as beau­ti­ful as oth­er his­toric hous­es, it had mer­it, she added."We were sad to see it go. Sud­den­ly you just saw all these trucks there," Roberts said by phone on Tues­day.An­oth­er mem­ber of the group, Ge­of­frey MacLean, said be­cause the de­mol­ished house was not a par­tic­u­lar­ly dec­o­ra­tive style, it was per­haps less no­ticed than the more elab­o­rate ex­am­ples of T&T's her­itage.

"This ac­tu­al­ly would be the sec­ond sim­i­lar build­ing to be re­cent­ly de­mol­ished in this area, which would in­clude the build­ing at the cor­ner of Stan­more Av­enue and Queen's Park West," he said via e-mail.Roberts and MacLean agreed main­tain­ing the build­ings of dif­fer­ent styles around the Sa­van­nah would be an im­por­tant as­pect of Trinidad's his­toric preser­va­tion."We need to have an­oth­er look at hous­es like that and if there are any in fair­ly good con­di­tion we should try to pre­serve them," Roberts said.

She said per­haps it was time to re-group and look at what could be done to save sim­i­lar hous­es.When con­tact­ed, Mar­lon Green of the Na­tion­al Trust, said the house was nev­er on the in­ven­to­ry for prop­er­ties of in­ter­est."It was not on the list and it was not at all con­sid­ered," he said, adding that the trust had no his­to­ry records or in­for­ma­tion about the build­ing.MacLean es­ti­mat­ed it was built be­tween 1930-1935.He said one of the pos­i­tives about the build­ing be­ing de­mol­ished was it gave peo­ple a bet­ter view of the ad­ja­cent Boissiere House.

"(Con­verse­ly) adding ad­di­tion­al space to the Boissiere House min­imis­es any in­tru­sion of the site and in­deed al­lows greater vis­i­bil­i­ty of the struc­ture, an im­por­tant as­pect for pub­lic in­ter­est," he added.When asked about the Boissiere House next door and the on­go­ing ren­o­va­tions, Roberts said she was pleased to see the way the restora­tion of the house was go­ing, and the new own­er was be­ing sen­si­tive to its in­tegri­ty.

"From her ob­ser­va­tions," she said, "they are be­ing very care­ful and try­ing not to de­stroy any­thing. It's look­ing quite nice."The T&T Guardian un­der­stands the house was pur­chased as a sur­prise gift for Sam­my's birth­day and since then work on the house has been on­go­ing, ap­par­ent­ly to re­store it.Roberts said she had spo­ken to Sam­my di­rect­ly and said he was proud to own it and had giv­en as­sur­ances he would not do any­thing to dam­age the in­tegri­ty of the house.

"Cit­i­zens for Con­ser­va­tion are very hap­py. They've done a love­ly job."Asked what the build­ing would be used for Roberts said she did not know but was not wor­ried."They have tak­en so much care up to this point, I don't be­lieve any­thing will be done to de­stroy the fab­ric of the house."