Kali­fa Clyne

Gov­ern­ment should pro­vide tax in­cen­tives, grants and low in­ter­est loans for peo­ple who own and are com­mit­ted to pre­serv­ing his­toric build­ings for fu­ture gen­er­a­tions. This was the sug­ges­tion of pres­i­dent of Cit­i­zens for Con­ser­va­tion, Rudy­lynn Roberts. It is a spe­cial in­ter­est group fo­cus­ing on the preser­va­tion and restora­tion of his­tor­i­cal build­ings.

Roberts, who heads the group, made the state­ment on Wednes­day evening dur­ing a lec­ture by Cana­di­an pro­fes­sor of ar­chi­tec­ture Yvan Caz­abon, at the old Fire Brigade build­ing on Aber­crom­by Street, Port-of-Spain. "If help were avail­able for peo­ple who own his­toric build­ings, more of these build­ings could be saved," Roberts said. "Some of these build­ings take a lot of main­te­nance and we want Gov­ern­ment to put aside mon­ey to save some of these small build­ings."

Roberts gave ex­am­ples of Pres­i­dent's House and the Her­itage Li­brary in Port-of-Spain as build­ings that were be­ing al­lowed to fall apart be­cause of ne­glect. Chair­man of the Na­tion­al Trust and Deputy Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary in the Min­istry of Arts and Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism, Vel Lewis, gave the as­sur­ance that the min­istry had plans for the Her­itage Li­brary build­ing.

He said a de­ci­sion had been tak­en to bring for­ward pro­pos­als for the restora­tion and use of the build­ing. "A note will go to cab­i­net pend­ing the sub­mis­sion of a pro­pos­al from Nalis," Lewis said. Wednes­day's lec­ture by Caz­abon formed part of the ed­u­ca­tion pro­gramme un­der­tak­en by the con­ser­va­tion group. It fo­cused on the book, A Tale of Two Hous­es, which was an ar­chi­tec­tur­al study of two his­tor­i­cal struc­tures in Trinidad-Boissiere House on Queen's Park West and the Fi­gari res­i­dence on Pic­cadil­ly Street, Port-of-Spain.

The book was writ­ten based on a vis­it to both hous­es by Caz­abon and a grad­u­ate class of ar­chi­tects last year. Caz­abon de­scribed the struc­tures as orig­i­nal to T&T. "These two build­ings are of this place, the ex­act style does not take place any­where else, even though there is an Eu­ro­pean in­flu­ence," said Caz­abon. "The de­tails have Eu­ro­pean and Vic­to­ri­an in­flu­ences, how­ev­er, it is not an ex­act mir­ror but a col­lage of dif­fer­ent el­e­ments mash up in­to one par­tic­u­lar as­sem­bly," Caz­abon com­ment­ed. He said, how­ev­er, that the struc­ture of both hous­es was bad­ly af­fect­ed by the weath­er con­di­tions.

He said last year when he vis­it­ed T&T, part of the Boissiere house had been stick­ing out. He said to­day, that same part was falling off, about six feet away.

"The struc­ture is on the verge of col­lapse," said Caz­abon. He ad­vised that the space in the Boissiere House specif­i­cal­ly would make a good cen­tre for ar­chi­tec­ture. "The rooms are like gal­leries and the most ap­pro­pri­ate use would be a pub­lic build­ing. A build­ing like this is a part of the sto­ry, the ar­chi­tec­tur­al his­to­ry of T&T," he said. Caz­abon and his stu­dents are cur­rent­ly in Trinidad do­ing a study and com­pil­ing a re­port on the Na­tion­al Her­itage Li­brary, over­look­ing Wood­ford Square in Port-of-Spain.­