He­len Dray­ton

Any­one who trav­els Wright­son Road will know it is usu­al­ly a jam ses­sion, with bumper-to-bumper ve­hi­cles crawl­ing from the Au­drey Jef­fers High­way, right up to the Wa­ter­front head­ing to South Quay.Like so many oth­er ar­eas across this twin-is­land re­pub­lic, planned de­vel­op­ment cer­tain­ly didn't give it the unique char­ac­ter of a com­mer­cial, in­dus­tri­al and recre­ation­al thor­ough­fare. It is fair to say those ac­tiv­i­ties just hap­pened over time.

It fea­tures sev­er­al land­marks in­clud­ing the Crowne Plaza Ho­tel, Hy­att Re­gency at the Wa­ter­front, the fire sta­tion, TTPost, UTT John S Don­ald­son Cam­pus, the Chest and Heart As­so­ci­a­tion, Pow­er­gen's tow­er­ing plant, and the sore called the Li­cens­ing Of­fice. The area op­po­site that di­lap­i­dat­ed build­ing is one of the most clut­tered parts of the road­way with a va­ri­ety of run­down-look­ing re­tail out­lets.

Then there is the Na­tion­al Flour Mills that could get a stranger dis­ori­ent­ed be­cause its si­los look as though that com­pa­ny makes char­coal and not flour. Seen with­in the en­vi­rons of the road, at the south­ern end of the Au­drey Jef­fers, are the sprawl­ing Movi­eTowne en­ter­tain­ment and shop­ping cen­tre, the Mar­riott Ho­tel and the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um. Here and there, a few res­i­dences hold on to their old-time life­lines.

Prob­a­bly nei­ther Mr Walsh Wright­son nor Mr Ran­jit Ku­mar would have en­vis­aged Wright­son Road as it is to­day. Dur­ing the pe­ri­od 1895-1907, the Eng­lish­man, Wright­son, who held the po­si­tion of di­rec­tor of pub­lic works, con­struct­ed a part of the road from the west­ern end of Lon­don Street to a point on the seashore in the area of the Wood­brook Es­tate. A pump­ing sta­tion to pump the city's sewage in­to the sea was his pur­pose. It is his name the high­way bears.

http://www4.guardian.co.tt/ed­i­to­r­i­al/2013-12-01/there-ca­bal-ilp