Judy Ray­mond

The Red House is pop­u­lar­ly be­lieved to have been burnt down in 1903 and then re­built, so the cur­rent build­ing is usu­al­ly dat­ed from then.In fact, it's half a cen­tu­ry old­er.As the say­ing sug­gests, the fa­mous Red House fire didn't last long. The build­ing was not burnt to the ground–pho­tos tak­en at the time show the struc­ture re­mained in­tact, though the roof, wood­en floors and win­dows were de­stroyed. The de­bris was cleared out and the skele­ton of the build­ing was not de­mol­ished, but re­fur­bished.

The 1903 fire was on­ly one of sev­er­al set­backs the Red House has suf­fered since 1844, when the foun­da­tion stone was laid on Feb­ru­ary 15 by the Gov­er­nor, Col Sir Hen­ry MacLeod.The new build­ing was to house the leg­isla­tive cham­ber and the of­fices of the gov­er­nor, the colo­nial trea­sur­er, the at­tor­ney gen­er­al, oth­er colo­nial of­fi­cials and the law courts. It was de­signed by the Su­per­in­ten­dent of Pub­lic Works, Richard Brid­gens, an Eng­lish-born artist who was not an en­gi­neer or ar­chi­tect but a fur­ni­ture de­sign­er by train­ing.

That was one of the rea­sons why the build­ing ran in­to trou­ble short­ly af­ter con­struc­tion be­gan. The roof was too heavy for the beams that sup­port­ed it, and work came to a stop while that prob­lem was ad­dressed. There were huge cost over­runs (the orig­i­nal al­lo­ca­tion for the en­tire build­ing was �16,000) and al­le­ga­tions of cor­rup­tion in the award of the con­tract.

Then the Trea­sury ran out of mon­ey al­to­geth­er. Even­tu­al­ly the new Gov­er­nor, Lord Har­ris, found some funds to make the build­ing fit for use and de­clared it open in 1848. At this point it was still lit­tle more than a bare brick shell, al­though Brid­gens–who had died in 1846–had prob­a­bly planned a neo­clas­si­cal fin­ish. As Caz­abon's 1850 draw­ings show, it was ac­tu­al­ly two very plain, boxy build­ings joined by a colon­nade, be­cause Prince Street ran through the cen­tre and the road­way had to be kept open.

The fol­low­ing year, these new Gov­ern­ment Build­ings came un­der at­tack for the first time when there was a ri­ot over a plan to treat debtors like com­mon crim­i­nals. The in­tre­pid Lord Har­ris spent a night un­der siege in the build­ing, which was guard­ed by troops. A num­ber of ri­ot­ers were ar­rest­ed, and one was shot dead, but apart from some bro­ken win­dows, the build­ing was un­dam­aged.

In the 1890s the build­ing was giv­en �15,000 worth of ad­di­tions and al­ter­ations, and in 1897, for Queen Vic­to­ria's di­a­mond ju­bilee, it was paint­ed red and thus got its new name.

Six years lat­er, how­ev­er, dur­ing an­oth­er protest, on March 23, 1903, the Red House went up in flames in the most fa­mous fire ever lit in Port-of-Spain. An an­gry crowd was protest­ing against an in­crease in wa­ter rates that was be­ing de­bat­ed in the Leg­isla­tive Coun­cil's cham­ber. The Ri­ot Act was read, 16 peo­ple were killed, and in the con­fu­sion the Red House went up in flames.

Af­ter the fire, the de­sign was re­worked by pub­lic draughts­man Daniel Hahn. It was he who added the high cen­tral cupo­la now known as the Ro­tun­da, the or­nate stuc­co ceil­ings in the south­ern and north­ern cham­bers, and the para­pet around the roof.The Red House that emerged from the flames was the one we know to­day, based on the barn­like struc­ture first be­gun 159 years ago last week.

Click here to check out Raquel La Roche's Red House restora­tion pho­to­blog