Tuesday, February 19 2008

THE AGENT in charge of the sale of the renowned Gingerbread House around the Queen’s Park Savannah, Port-of-Spain yesterday called for help in finding a suitable buyer of the property.

The call for buyers of the landmark comes as hundreds of citizens, both at home and abroad, continued to join the campaign to lobby Government to purchase the house which has been described as “Trinidad’s visual heritage at its best.”

Responding to the increasing outcry over the proposed sale of the property, Ann Marie Aboud, of Liftetime Realty, said, “instead of everybody knit-picking they can help us sell the house, to find someone who will love the house like we did.”

Since going online on Saturday, 728 persons have, up to yesterday evening, signed an online petition aimed at lobbying Government to purchase and preserve the property which has been listed for sale for an asking price of $63 million.

An average of 243 persons per day have therefore signed the petition hosted at www.saveboissierehouse.org, a website set up to lobby for preservation of the historic house at 12 Queen’s Park West. “Obviously quite a lot of people are concerned about the house and have some strong feeling about it,” said editor Nicholas Laughlin, who is the running the site in conjunction with Georgia Poppewell, an editor and photojournalist.

Newsday understands that the National Trust of Trinidad and Tobago will lobby Cabinet to have the building listed on the national heritage list. The list currently has 25 properties including the Red House, Magnificient Seven, Our Lady of Monsterrat Church, Tortuga, and the Rosary Church, Port-of-Spain.

Noting that there were rumours the owners of the house could no longer afford to upkeep it, Laughlin pointed out that the real issue over the proposed sale is the lack of systems in place in this country to help persons who own historically important buildings to maintain them.

“We want the house preserved, but we also have a long-term objective of wanting a system in place for people who own historic properties to have some kind of help to upkeep them,” he said.

Built in 1904, the Gingerbread House was described by architect John Newel in his book Ajoupa as, “a classic Trinidad building...magical and nostalgic with mysterious colours and a melancholy air. This house is an example of Trinidad’s visual heritage at its best.”