Zahra Gor­don

Ar­chi­tect and con­ser­va­tion­ist Ge­of­frey MacLean says the ap­pear­ance of a pitched roof at City Hall, Knox Street, Port-of-Spain, is an "un­for­tu­nate ad­di­tion" not in line with the cur­rent aes­thet­ic de­sign of the build­ing. Two work­men were ob­served by the T&T Guardian yes­ter­day clear­ing the area un­der the steel beams put up for the new roof. MacLean said care­ful con­sid­er­a­tion need­ed to be tak­en when ex­pand­ing land­marks. "Too of­ten when of­fices out­grow the space, they don't think when con­struct­ing ad­di­tions and usu­al­ly look at the cheap­est so­lu­tion but it's im­por­tant that the aes­thet­ic of the orig­i­nal build­ing not be de­stroyed," he said. He added: "We have to re­spect build­ings as they are de­signed." Port-of-Spain May­or Louis Lee Sing could not be reached for com­ment as mem­bers of coun­cil and the Port-of-Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion took part in a week­end re­treat. They are ex­pect­ed back to work to­day. Calls to Lee Sing's cell­phone and text mes­sages went unan­swered

Deputy may­or, Keron Valen­tine, how­ev­er, an­swered a call to his cell­phone from the T&T Guardian and said the work was part of on­go­ing de­vel­op­ments at City Hall, which he de­scribed as cramped for space. He said he could not give de­tails on the project cost or time­frame as it was an is­sue for "ad­min­is­tra­tion." "Space con­tin­ues to be a prob­lem and the cor­po­ra­tion is do­ing things to make the area more com­fort­able," said Valen­tine. City Cor­po­ra­tion CEO, Winifred David, said pub­lic ser­vants were not al­lowed to speak to the me­dia and told the T&T Guardian to sub­mit a writ­ten re­quest for in­for­ma­tion. David was al­so at the re­treat but an­swered a call on her cell­phone.

MacLean said City Hall was of par­tic­u­lar sig­nif­i­cance be­cause it was home to the In­de­pen­dence mur­al, Con­quer­abia (1961), by artist Carlisle Chang cre­at­ed when the City Hall was con­struct­ed in 1961. The mur­al was one of many pub­lic art­works cre­at­ed by Chang that MacLean said lacks pub­lic ap­pre­ci­a­tion and recog­ni­tion. Con­quer­abia is the orig­i­nal name of the Amerindi­an set­tle­ment that is now Port-of-Spain. The mur­al de­picts ar­chi­tec­tur­al and cul­tur­al land­scapes in stone etched in­to the a wall fac­ing Knox Street in the City Hall foy­er. Al­though MacLean said Lee Sing was well aware of the need to pre­serve the mur­al, he not­ed the cor­po­ra­tion would be re­miss to al­low Con­quer­abia to fol­low the same fate as Chang's In­her­ent No­bil­i­ty of Man. That mur­al was de­stroyed by the ex­pan­sion of the Pi­ar­co Air­port in 1977.