The Trea­sury Build­ing, lo­cat­ed at the cor­ner of St Vin­cent Street and In­de­pen­dence Square North, Port-of-Spain, is deemed a cul­tur­al her­itage, pub­licly-owned site by the Na­tion­al Trust of Trinidad and To­ba­go. Ac­cord­ing to their web­site, the orig­i­nal Trea­sury Cham­bers, hous­ing the Gov­ern­ment Trea­sury, Post Of­fice, Sav­ings Bank and Bond­ed Ware­house was de­stroyed by fire on June 25, 1932.

The cor­ner­stone of the present build­ing which is on the site of the orig­i­nal build­ing was laid in March 1936 and the build­ing of­fi­cial­ly com­plet­ed and com­mis­sioned in 1938.

Dur­ing the pe­ri­od 1938-1964, the premis­es were shared with the Gen­er­al Post Of­fice. When the post of­fice was re­lo­cat­ed to Wright­son Road, the premis­es were oc­cu­pied by the Cen­tral Bank of Trinidad and To­ba­go. In 1986 the Cen­tral Bank moved in­to its new of­fices in the Er­ic Williams Fi­nan­cial Com­plex and the en­tire build­ing was made avail­able for the ex­clu­sive use of the Trea­sury Di­vi­sion, Min­istry of Fi­nance.

Trinidad and To­ba­go’s great twen­ti­eth-cen­tu­ry ar­chi­tect, An­tho­ny C Lewis, de­scribes his ini­ti­a­tion in­to ar­chi­tec­ture when in 1938 he worked with the com­pa­ny spend­ing his morn­ings build­ing the new Trea­sury “...watch­ing the re­in­forced con­crete work and foun­da­tions to the vaults” and lat­er, when he com­mis­sioned as an ar­chi­tect for the ren­o­va­tions, “… in 1962 I was to be the ar­chi­tect for the ren­o­va­tions of the ground floor, af­ter the post of­fice had been re­moved to Wright­son Road, for the es­tab­lish­ment of the orig­i­nal Cen­tral Bank of Trinidad and To­ba­go, in which project one of the main struc­tur­al al­ter­ations was to in­crease the wall, floor and roof con­struc­tion of the same vaults I had watched be­ing con­struct­ed”.

A fine ex­am­ple of art de­co ar­chi­tec­ture, the build­ing con­tin­ues to be a land­mark for both lo­cals and for­eign­ers. By 1831 when Gov­er­nor Sir Lewis Grant took of­fice, the gov­er­nor’s of­fices were in the Trea­sury Build­ing, on the north-west­ern cor­ner of King Street and St Vin­cent Street, while the gov­er­nor con­tin­ued to live in the Botan­ic Gar­dens.

Slav­ery was brought to an end in the British West In­dies with the Eman­ci­pa­tion Bill of 1833. In Trinidad, the Eman­ci­pa­tion Procla­ma­tion was read on Au­gust 1838 at the Trea­sury Build­ing site.

As with most peo­ple, mat­ters and places of na­tion­al in­ter­est like The Trea­sury has been the top­ic or ref­er­enced in many a ca­lyp­so over the years. One such from way back in 1937 by Atil­la The Hun (Ray­mond Queve­do), lat­er on, a politi­cian, called Trea­sury Scan­dal (www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-OS­oozC8XU):

I won­der if it's bobol'

What they do­ing with tax­pay­er's mon­ey at all

I won­der if it's bobol'

What they do­ing with tax­pay­er's mon­ey at all

All around the town you can hear the talk

Two hun­dred thou­sand dol­lars can' walk

Peo­ple say­ing it's a con­spir­a­cy

I mean the scan­dal in the trea­sury

It was about just eight months past

That the whole of Trinidad stood aghast

When the gov­ern­ment made a de­c­la­ra­tion

That cre­at­ed a great sen­sa­tion

In the books of the trea­sury some­thing went wrong

Two hun­dred thou­sand dol­lars could not be foun'

And every clerk say, "It ain't me fault"

So it must be a spir­it open de vault

Well now the en­tire pop­u­la­tion

Are de­mand­ing ex­pla­na­tion

For when to bal­ance his books the poor clerks fail

They take him to court and sends him to jail

Some say in bac­carat the mon­ey los'

Oth­ers de­clare that they buy race horse

That some­one stole it we can't de­ny

For mon­ey ain't got wings and it can­not fly

All of this ev­i­dence goes to show

They were boboliz­ing long time ago

In fact, it's an opin­ion of mine

They car­ry 'way cash a very long time

I'm sure that near every­body know

How they used to burn the notes long ago

Well, this clever cul­prit, he use he head

He keep the bank notes and burn up pa­per in­stead

Well, I would not have made this song at all

But I ain't got noth­ing in the bobol

While poor Atil­la see­ing hell

They car­ry­ing away cash and they do­ing well

For two hun­dred thou­sand, take it from me

I would make five years quite hap­pi­ly

And, when I come from jail, what the deuce I care?

I'd be liv­ing the life of a mil­lion­aire

Nass­er Khan is a re­searcher-au­thor-pro­duc­er-pub­lish­er-free lance writer. His lat­est pub­li­ca­tion, en­ti­tled Cel­e­brat­ing the Cul­ture & Arts of Trinidad and To­ba­go, spon­sored by First Cit­i­zens and Shell TT, will be launched soon.