In­ter­na­tion­al Coun­cil on Mon­u­ments and Sites (ICO­MOS) T&T, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Cit­i­zens for Con­ser­va­tion, is cel­e­brat­ing In­ter­na­tion­al Day for Mon­u­ments and Sites with a se­ries of ar­ti­cles fea­tur­ing her­itage build­ings in the T&T Guardian.

To­day is the sec­ond in­stal­ment in the se­ries and fea­tures Har­ris Square, Port-of-Spain.

The theme for the In­ter­na­tion­al Day for Mon­u­ments and Sites is the Her­itage of Ed­u­ca­tion.

Through­out his­to­ry and in dif­fer­ent geo-cul­tur­al con­texts, ed­u­ca­tion was prac­tised in a wide range of places or build­ings.

Open spaces, or the pro­tec­tive shad­ow of a tree, could be use­ful for the trans­mis­sion of knowl­edge, but so too were spe­cif­ic in­sti­tu­tion­al build­ings, such as schools, uni­ver­si­ties, church­es, acad­e­mies, li­braries, monas­ter­ies, etc.

Many of those build­ings, groups of build­ings or sites are recog­nised as bear­ing, not on­ly so­cial or in­sti­tu­tion­al val­ues, but al­so his­toric or artis­tic ones and have there­fore be­come a sig­nif­i­cant part of our cul­tur­al her­itage.

ICO­MOS T&T seeks to raise pub­lic aware­ness of the full di­ver­si­ty of cul­tur­al her­itage places and land­scapes of na­tion­al or lo­cal sig­nif­i­cance.

For fur­ther in­for­ma­tion on the day, pre­vi­ous themes, sup­port ma­te­r­i­al and the cal­en­dar of ac­tiv­i­ties around the world, go to the In­ter­na­tion­al Day for Mon­u­ments and Sites page of the ICO­MOS In­ter­na­tion­al Web site.

Har­ris Square, be­tween Pem­broke and Aber­crom­by streets, Port-of-Spain, es­tab­lished in the ear­ly 1900s, is named as a trib­ute to Lord Har­ris, gov­er­nor of Trinidad be­tween 1846 and 1854.

Lord Har­ris was one of Trinidad's most pro­gres­sive gov­er­nors. Af­ter the abo­li­tion of slav­ery and the in­tro­duc­tion of in­den­tured labour from In­dia, Lord Har­ris was caught be­tween the pres­sures of the planters and im­por­ta­tion of labour.

In 1849 and 1851 he halt­ed im­mi­gra­tion from In­dia. In 1852 im­mi­gra­tion was re­opened with safe­guards, in­clud­ing the pres­ence of a pro­tec­tor of im­mi­grants and free pas­sages for the wives of im­mi­grants and their chil­dren.

Lord Har­ris was al­so re­spon­si­ble for es­tab­lish­ing an ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem based on "gen­er­al in­struc­tion on sec­u­lar lines," out of which Queen's Roy­al Col­lege was es­tab­lished.

He al­so es­tab­lished the Mod­el Train­ing School for Teach­ers. He al­so, with Jus­tice Knox in 1851, es­tab­lished the pub­lic li­brary on Knox Street in Port-of-Spain and es­tab­lished the first pipe-borne wa­ter sys­tem from cis­terns in Mar­aval to Port-of-Spain.

In 1849 Lord Har­ris passed an or­di­nance as the old Span­ish quar­ters bar­rios and parish­es no longer func­tioned prop­er­ly, re­or­gan­is­ing Trinidad in­to north­ern and south­ern dis­tricts, each fur­ther di­vid­ed in­to four coun­ties each, as it is to­day.

He pro­mot­ed the ex­ploita­tion of as­phalt from the Pitch Lake and was re­spon­si­ble for de­vel­op­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tions through road sys­tems, in­clud­ing, in 1853, a road through the Oropouche La­goon and Trinidad's first rail­way con­nect­ing San Fer­nan­do to the Cipero Creek used pri­mar­i­ly for trans­port­ing sug­ar.

Lord Har­ris mar­ried Trinida­di­an Sarah Cum­mins. His son, George Robert Can­ning, the fourth Lord Har­ris and known as the "crick­et­ing Lord Har­ris," was re­spon­si­ble for pro­mot­ing crick­et through­out the British colonies.

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