Red House unprotectedBy ANDRE BAGOO Sunday, February 24 2008
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UNPROTECTED: The Red House (left) and the Gingerbread House (right) are just two of the important, landmark buildings in this country that are curren...
THE RED HOUSE and the Magnificent Seven are among a list of this country’s most important architectural landmarks currently left legally unprotected despite attempts to have them listed as “properties of interest” under National Trust Legislation.
In fact, since the introduction of special legislation to deal with protecting landmarks was passed in Parliament in 1991, not a single property has been listed as a “property of interest” for the purposes of protection under the National Trust Act of Trinidad and Tobago, according to Rudylynn Roberts, Secretary of the National Trust.
Roberts made the startling disclosure on Friday night at a discussion forum over the proposed sale of the landmark “Gingerbread House” at the contemporary arts space Alice Yard at 80 Roberts Street, Woodbrook.
The house, also known as the Boissiere House, was last month listed for sale for an asking price of around US$10 million (TT$63 million) on American website craigslist.org.
Roberts said the Gingerbread House is just one of 25 properties which the National Trust has tried, over the last three years, to have formally listed in a protected properties register without success.
Twenty-five dossiers on each of these properties prepared by the National Trust have been submitted to the Culture Ministry in conformity with the National Trust Act for the purpose of listing. Yet to date, the dossiers have not been approved for listing because, according to Roberts, they are “stuck in bureaucracy”.
Sunday Newsday understands that the 25 properties include the Red House, this country’s seat of Government; and the Queen’s Park Savannah’s “Magnificent Seven” which comprises: Mille Fleurs (also known as Prada’s House), the Roman Catholic Archbishop’s House, Queen’s Royal College, Whitehall, Stoll-meyer’s Castle (also known as Killarney), Ambar’s House (or Roomo), and Hayes Court, the residence of the Anglican Bishop.
Other properties not yet listed include the Rosary Church in downtown Port-of-Spain and Our Lady of Monsterrat Church, Tortuga.
According to Section 8 of the National Trust Act, the Trust may “prepare a list of buildings...of particular national, historic or architectural interest.” Individual dossiers are prepared to determine if the buildings proposed for listing meet stringent criteria such as: historicity, rarity, international repute, Caribbean patrimony, and natural or outstanding beauty.
But once the list is complete, the Minister of Culture must approve it before the properties are actually listed in a public register and gazetted.
If listed, the properties will mainly be in the hands of the National Trust.
“The process of listing is complicated and more so because it’s never been done before,” Roberts said.
“It’s frustrating. We have done everything that we can do according to the Act to start the listing of buildings but until the politicians are convinced that this is something that we should be doing it just isn’t given the priority that it should be given.”
The National Trust currently has a long-list of 250 properties that it would like to eventually see listed.
The Trust has the power, under legislation, to itself purchase property and is funded in part by government and donations. The 2008 Budget allocation for the Trust Council is $500,000.
The Trust, which is mandated by law to, “acquire property” and make “the public aware of the value and beauty of the heritage of Trinidad and Tobago”, does not have a website and is not listed in the phone-book.
An online petition lobbying Government to intervene in the impending sale of the Ginger-bread House, which the Trust hopes to preserve, has to date gathered more than 2,100 names.
It will be submitted to Prime Minister Patrick Manning later this month.
