SHAR­LENE RAM­PER­SAD

Se­nior In­ves­tiga­tive Re­porter

Shar­lene.ram­per­sad@guardian.co.tt

In re­cent weeks, this coun­try’s his­toric build­ings have come in­to sharp fo­cus af­ter the Gov­ern­ment said White­hall re­quired sub­stan­tial re­fur­bish­ment and it did not have the funds to do so at the mo­ment.

But while much of the dis­cus­sion has cen­tred around pol­i­tics, his­to­ry buffs or those fas­ci­nat­ed with build­ings like the Mag­nif­i­cent Sev­en have been lob­by­ing for these places to be cher­ished, re­fur­bished and pre­served. His­to­ry en­thu­si­ast Pa­tri­cia Bisses­sar be­lieves us­ing White­hall as an ad­min­is­tra­tive of­fice has con­tributed to its di­lap­i­da­tion over the years.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia last week, Bisses­sar ad­vo­cat­ed for White­hall and the oth­er build­ings that make up the Mag­nif­i­cent Sev­en — Mille Fleurs, Queen’s Roy­al Col­lege, Stollmey­er’s Cas­tle, Arch­bish­op’s House, Roomor and Hayes Court — to be­come tourist at­trac­tions.

Of the sev­en, White­hall, Mille Fleurs, QRC and Stollmey­er’s Cas­tle are state-owned while the oth­ers are pri­vate­ly owned.

White­hall, orig­i­nal­ly called Rosen­weg, was built along Mar­aval Road in 1904 by a wealthy co­coa planter named Joseph Leon Agos­ti­ni.

Us­ing im­port­ed white coral from Bar­ba­dos and de­signed in a Moor­ish Mediter­ranean style with in­flu­ences from the ar­chi­tec­ture of Cor­si­ca, where Agos­ti­ni’s fam­i­ly orig­i­nat­ed, the con­struc­tion took three years.

Af­ter Agos­ti­ni’s death in 1906, ac­cord­ing to the Na­tion­al Trust, his fam­i­ly re­mained in res­i­dence un­til 1910, when the prop­er­ty was fore­closed for lack of mort­gage pay­ments.

It was sold to an Amer­i­can busi­ness­man from Venezuela named Robert Hen­der­son.

The Na­tion­al Trust said dur­ing Hen­der­son’s own­er­ship, a “de­light­ful va­ri­ety of fur­nish­ings of the in­te­ri­or was added to the re­fined dig­ni­ty of the ex­te­ri­or.”

The Hen­der­son fam­i­ly al­so re­named it White Hall, af­ter the coral stone used in con­struc­tion.

The build­ing was com­man­deered from Hen­der­son’s heirs dur­ing the Sec­ond World War as head­quar­ters of the Air Raid Pre­cau­tion.

In 1944, it was rent­ed by the British Coun­cil as a cul­tur­al cen­tre and lat­er, the Trinidad Cen­tral Li­brary, Re­gion­al Li­brary, Na­tion­al Archive, Gov­ern­ment Broad­cast­ing Unit, Trinidad Art So­ci­ety and the Cel­lar Club all oc­cu­pied space in the build­ing.

Five years lat­er, the build­ing stood emp­ty un­til 1954 when it was pur­chased by the Gov­ern­ment.

In 1963, af­ter In­de­pen­dence, it be­came the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, oc­cu­pied by the coun­try’s first prime min­is­ter Dr Er­ic Williams.

In 2000, White­hall was re­stored and con­tin­ued to be used as the OPM.

In 2009, it was evac­u­at­ed due to an ad­vanced state of di­lap­i­da­tion.

In 2016, a ma­jor restora­tion start­ed, with de­sign­ers in­te­grat­ing mod­ern con­ve­niences “with­out com­pro­mis­ing the in­te­ri­or or ex­te­ri­or fin­ish­es,” the Na­tion­al Trust said. Bud­get records showed the restora­tion and out­fit­ting were com­plet­ed at a cost of $32 mil­lion, al­low­ing the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter to re-oc­cu­py White­hall in Sep­tem­ber 2019 af­ter a ten-year ab­sence.

“In fact, the very elab­o­rate ceil­ings, the in­tri­cate stair­case, the orig­i­nal doors and mold­ings and floors were all care­ful­ly re­fur­bished to make this her­itage house the most elab­o­rate of the sev­en man­sions,” the Na­tion­al Trust said about the ren­o­va­tion.

“The for­mer sta­bles that had been re­fur­bished to be­come of­fices were now re­pur­posed in­to a se­cu­ri­ty ac­cess point util­is­ing the back trace as a pub­lic ac­cess from the of­fi­cial car park to the west of Kil­lar­ney. The House was re-oc­cu­pied by the Prime Min­is­ter’s of­fice in Au­gust 2019.”

But de­spite these ex­ten­sive, cost­ly ren­o­va­tions, just six years lat­er in 2025 when the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress took of­fice af­ter the gen­er­al elec­tion, Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath de­clared White­hall was un­fit for Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to oc­cu­py.

Padarath raised sev­er­al is­sues, in­clud­ing flood­ing, mould and un­suit­abil­i­ty for mod­ern ad­min­is­tra­tive func­tions.

A year lat­er, af­ter the pre­sen­ta­tion of the 2027 Bud­get, Padarath said the build­ing re­mains ill-suit­ed for the needs of a gov­ern­ment.

The con­di­tion of White­hall was raised again af­ter $500,000 was al­lo­cat­ed in the bud­get for the con­struc­tion of a White­hall com­pan­ion build­ing.

Padarath re­vealed plans were un­der­way to find al­ter­na­tive ac­com­mo­da­tion for sev­er­al OPM de­part­ments.

He said the Cab­i­net Sec­re­tari­at was no longer housed at White­hall be­cause of long­stand­ing in­fra­struc­tur­al and op­er­a­tional chal­lenges.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia on Oc­to­ber 29, Bisses­sar shared a sim­i­lar sen­ti­ment.