An­ge­lo Bisses­sars­ingh

Fred­er­ick Street in Port-of-Spain has al­ways been a mec­ca for shop­pers. The city's main thor­ough­fare, it draws to its busy side­walks peo­ple from all walks of so­ci­ety re­gard­less of age, colour or eco­nom­ic stand­ing.

This is es­pe­cial­ly so at Christ­mas time, when the hum of ac­tiv­i­ty seems to be in­creased ten­fold. Stores an­swer to the oc­ca­sion by vy­ing to out­do each oth­er with en­tic­ing win­dow dis­plays and sales.

Tru­ly the ad­vent of shop­ping malls has drawn off some of the reg­u­lar clien­tele who in years gone by would have braved the throng to do their sea­son­al spend­ing, but there is still an in­de­scrib­able al­lure that em­anates from Fred­er­ick Street.

Part of the long­stand­ing fas­ci­na­tion came in the wake of a dev­as­tat­ing fire in 1895 which razed dozens of an­cient and rick­ety wood­en build­ings that had stood since an­oth­er great con­fla­gra­tion in 1808. A new style of ar­chi­tec­ture, pi­o­neered by Scot­tish ar­chi­tect George Brown, was im­ple­ment­ed and heav­i­ly in­cor­po­rat­ed el­e­ments of wrought iron and plate glass.

Build­ings were il­lu­mi­nat­ed dur­ing the day­time by in­no­v­a­tive "lantern roofs," which were glass-box sky­lights that pro­vid­ed a suf­fused but beau­ti­ful light in­side the oth­er­wise dark in­te­ri­ors. The trans­for­ma­tion of Fred­er­ick Street made it a show­piece in the Caribbean.

One of the em­po­ri­ums which rose from the fire and which was al­ready an es­tab­lished name in the city was the firm of James Todd and Sons.

James Todd was an Eng­lish­man who had come to the is­land in 1852 and com­menced busi­ness in a mod­est way with a small dry-goods shop on rent­ed premis­es at 12 Fred­er­ick Street. He was well-poised to ride the tide of a colos­sal boom in co­coa prices and pro­duc­tion, which was stim­u­lat­ed by pro­gres­sive land re­forms im­ple­ment­ed in the late 1860s.

James Todd ac­quired sev­er­al co­coa es­tates, es­pe­cial­ly in the rapid­ly de­vel­op­ing hin­ter­lands east of Ch­agua­nas and in the rolling hills near the Ca­paro Riv­er val­ley. As with most oth­er large busi­ness­es at the time, Todd's of­fered a line of cred­it to co­coa farm­ers that al­lowed them to take goods dur­ing the year with­out cash pay­ment, the score be­ing set­tled when the co­coa har­vest was brought in. Sacks of dried beans would be val­ued as cur­ren­cy and thus the mer­chant was able to turn an ad­di­tion­al prof­it from ex­port­ing co­coa.

This ac­tiv­i­ty cou­pled with his thriv­ing mer­can­tile trade made him a very af­flu­ent man in­deed by the time he died in 1884.

The keen­ly ob­ser­vant read­er would have not­ed by now that this was the ori­gin of the dis­trict lat­er and still known as Todd's Road. He had tak­en his son, David, in­to the busi­ness as a di­rec­tor, but tragedy struck when David died a year af­ter his fa­ther.

The reins passed to James's grand­son, James B L Todd, who proved that he was very ca­pa­ble of as­sum­ing stew­ard­ship of the work of two gen­er­a­tions. The younger Todd had a knack for feel­ing the pulse of the econ­o­my and in a time when a new mid­dle class was emerg­ing, he re­alised that there was a need for cheap, el­e­gant fur­ni­ture at rea­son­able cost since hith­er­to, the best fur­nish­ings were im­port­ed from the Unit­ed States and Eu­rope and were very ex­pen­sive.

Todd and Sons opened a work­shop on Cha­con Street, which used lo­cal woods culled right from the Todd es­tates. An­oth­er sub­sidiary, on Queen Street, was called the West End Car­riage Fac­to­ry, which en­com­passed a sad­dlery and black­smith shop as well, since this was the era be­fore mo­tor traf­fic.

The show­piece of the Todd em­pire was the store it owned on Fred­er­ick Street. In the wake of the 1895 fire it was re­built com­plete­ly in sig­na­ture George Brown style. Dubbed the Trinidad Ar­cade, it was one of the finest es­tab­lish­ments in the city and oc­cu­pied the en­tire width of the block be­tween Fred­er­ick and Hen­ry streets, with en­trances at both ends. School­books, toys, cloth­ing and hard­ware were at­trac­tive­ly dis­played along the cor­ri­dor be­tween the en­trances.

James B L Todd died in the 1930s, and the firm found­ed by his grand­fa­ther was forced to un­der­go sev­er­al merg­ers and ac­qui­si­tions in or­der to sur­vive.

Old­er gen­er­a­tions would re­mem­ber the es­tab­lish­ment of Stephens and Todd, which in an­oth­er in­car­na­tion was called Stephens, Fog­a­r­ty's and Todd. These were names that once stood on their own as proud re­mem­brances of a pros­per­ous time in our his­to­ry but which had all van­ished by the end of the 1970s.

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