ANN MARIE BISSES­SAR

Pro­fes­sor of Pub­lic Man­age­ment

It is more than a dream come true. My niece Carmeli­ta “Camy” Bisses­sars­ingh, af­ter what ap­peared to be an eter­ni­ty of search­ing, re­search­ing, call­ing and look­ing at hous­es, found the per­fect house. She fi­nal­ly held the keys as the new own­er of the Meyler House at 88 Cir­cu­lar Road, Bel­mont, two weeks ago.

The house is a beau­ti­ful old gem, well re­stored by the for­mer own­ers, who, it was ev­i­dent, poured a lot of love and mon­ey in­to a per­fect restora­tion project.

Carmeli­ta with her broth­er Mario, his wife, An­drea and, of course, we, the old­er heads, Pa­tri­cia, Rudolph, Julius, Gee­ta and I, are be­yond ex­cit­ed. We could have on­ly dreamed of be­com­ing part (per­haps a small part?) of such a worth­while project.

It was a dream of An­ge­lo’s, and now it has be­come a re­al­i­ty, and Carmeli­ta will have her hands filled.

The Meyler House–al­so to be known as the An­ge­lo Bisses­sars­ingh Her­itage House–is said to be a George Brown House built dur­ing the years 1903-1906.

George Brown was born in 1852 at Strath­miglo, Scot­land. He qual­i­fied as an ar­chi­tect and builder at Glas­gow Uni­ver­si­ty, and he trav­elled in 1883 to Trinidad to join Turn­bull, Stew­art and Com­pa­ny.

Ac­cord­ing to the book Ajoupa by John Newel Lewis (1983:191), Brown had: a sen­si­tive aes­thet­ic per­cep­tion cou­pled with an aus­tere dis­ci­pline and a pas­sion for hard work.

He was both an ar­chi­tect and builder, and this dy­nam­ic force took Trinidad by storm.”

In­deed, it was claimed that Brown trans­formed the Ajoupa—the French Cre­ole form of an ar­chi­tect, in­to Car­ni­val Queens.

On his ar­rival in 1883, Brown be­came in­volved in build­ing No 6, Cipri­ani Boule­vard. Lat­er, he was asked to re­build both sides of Fred­er­ick Street, which had been de­stroyed in a fire in 1895. He al­so built Har­ri­man’s, the Union Club, Hoadley’s, Arch­bish­op House and Muir Mar­shall among oth­ers. To safe­guard against fu­ture fires, Lewis (1983) in­forms us that Brown re-cre­at­ed stony, par­ty walls. In­side this cas­ing, he in­sert­ed sim­ple cast-iron frames with columns, beams and roof.

It was what Lewis (1983:195) sug­gest­ed was a pre­fab­ri­cat­ed fast-track sys­tem. Us­ing his new sys­tem George is cred­it­ed with build­ing sev­er­al his­toric hous­es in Port-of-Spain and its en­vi­rons, among them the Mille Fleurs house, the Meyler House as well as the house of the fa­mous artist, Boscoe Hold­er, the Boscoe Hold­er House (1884).

Among some of Brown’s in­no­va­tions in de­sign were rais­ing the hous­es off the ground, adding elon­gat­ed posts hold­ing up the roof, the in­tro­duc­ing of gallery or gal­leries in the case of two-sto­ried build­ings, iso­la­tion of the main roof in­to a dec­o­rat­ed lid, nar­row­ing the col­umn spac­ing, and the re­design and stan­dard­i­s­a­tion of doors, win­dows, rail­ings and jalousies.

Angelo Bissessarsingh

He be­lieved in the use of dow­elled joints. It is said: that he waved a mag­ic hand and Port-of-Spain be­came a new city...The flow­er­ing was ac­com­pa­nied by whole fields of gin­ger­bread hous­es, which he built and for which he pro­duced miles of fret­work un­til the year 1921 (Lewis: 201).

It is as­tound­ing but on first look­ing at the Meyler House (The An­ge­lo Bisses­sars­ingh Her­itage House) the build­ing looks small but ma­jes­tic. It has a gabled roof and there has been no spar­ing of the fret­works. Fur­ther­more, it is a wel­com­ing house—hold­ing your hand and walk­ing with you up the steps in­to the large doors. Walk­ing through the front steps, one is sur­prised to see a very large and ac­com­mo­dat­ing (with high mould­ed ceil­ings, sur­round­ed by at least two lay­ers of beau­ti­ful fret­work) main sa­lon.

Did I tell you that the floor­ing is beau­ti­ful wood? It could on­ly be de­scribed as “awe­some”—a blast from the past.

In this house, there is no porch, since the porch was added on as a main ad­di­tion to the house to cre­ate a lob­by.

The doors, orig­i­nal doors with orig­i­nal han­dles and even hinges are over ten feet tall. The house has four bed­rooms, a large din­ing room and a large kitchen which was more than like­ly a lat­er ad­di­tion. I ac­com­pa­nied my niece Camy and could on­ly sit and ad­mire…and ad­mire…and ad­mire. She was work­ing and work­ing…ah…age and youth…who said age did not have the ad­van­tage?

When the Josephs (fam­i­ly of one of the for­mer own­ers Mr Kelvin Joseph (1956-2007) joined us lat­er that day, we heard them whis­per­ing, talk­ing of the par­ties, the aun­ties, the un­cles, the cousins…The house came alive. It beamed…). Strange­ly, too, it seems that Carmeli­ta was the name of an aunt who lived there many, many years ago. As my niece Carmeli­ta stretched out her hand, smiled at the Josephs and said wel­come, Mr Joseph stepped back…Did Carmeli­ta re­turn to her house af­ter so long? My guess is good as yours.

Any­way, the young peo­ple have had their first meet­ing, draft­ed their first mis­sion and vi­sion state­ments and com­menced their strate­gic plan.

It com­pris­es a full list of ac­tiv­i­ties and projects and it is so ful­fill­ing to see these three young peo­ple, each with their spe­cif­ic dis­ci­plines (Mario is in Maths and Physics; An­drea in His­to­ry; and Carmeli­ta is in the field of Fine Arts and De­sign) sit­ting and brain­storm­ing.

I have ad­vised young grad­u­ates that while em­ploy­ment in their area may not be avail­able, what the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies has pro­vid­ed them with is the abil­i­ty to not on­ly think out­side the box but to cre­ate new box­es and new spheres and to grasp op­por­tu­ni­ties. UWI should al­so, and I know it did with my grad­u­ates, have fos­tered in them a self­less way of giv­ing back to the com­mu­ni­ty and the coun­try. My young peo­ple, Camy, Mario and An­drea have tak­en this path (note that my oth­er nephew Julio is on an en­gi­neer­ing path in the UK. Per­haps he will find his dream there, I hope, in the fu­ture, a château?)

The An­ge­lo Bisses­sars­ingh Her­itage House will be, when the young peo­ple are fin­ished, the on­ly house of its kind in the West In­dies. It will make us Trinida­di­ans and cer­tain­ly the peo­ple in Bel­mont, who have al­ready wel­comed us, very proud.

(This is part of a se­ries of the An­ge­lo Bisses­sars­ingh Her­itage House Col­lec­tion. I am ex­cit­ed to now be­come a Bel­montian. Imag­ine, as my friend Prof Gan­pat com­ment­ed, “Siparia com­ing to Bel­mont? Awe­some.)