Boissiere house for sale
18/02/08 22:19 Filed in: Musing
The Boissiere house is up for
sale.
The house, one of the remarkable old homes around the Savannah, though not one counted as part of the row described as the Magnificent Seven, is on the market for TT$63 million and the prevailing fear is that anyone who buys the property will promptly bulldoze 12 Queen's Park West to make "better" use of what is now prime real estate overlooking the city.
Blogger and published writer Nicholas Laughlin has triggered a wave
of concern about the eventual fate of the building, wisely stepping
in before it has actually been sold and the discussion changes from
preservation to salvation.
The first entry on a blog that I can find is on The Bookman's site here, but Laughlin's blog entry raised the ante to activism.
Since then, Georgia Popplewell, Sean Leonard and Laughlin have done admirable work in bringing the issue to national attention, and there is now a website dedicated to the issue, though it would be churlish to point out that the TV6 report on the issue used extensive footage of Mlle Fleur, one of the Magnificent Seven in particular disrepair. One collapsing national treasure might seem to be as good as another for cutaways.
Almost 20 years ago, I assisted a similar movement initiated by the Citizens for Conservation which stepped in at a critical juncture in the history of the George Brown house, which was in danger of being bulldozed to make way for a modern structure. In the end, the house was clumsily grafted into the development, but remained standing. Citizens for Conservation moved on to Stollmeyer Castle, successfully pushing the Government to take control of the building and stem an alarming degree of rot.
The CfC was, I believe, a presence that made the refurbishment of the adjacent White House, once the seat of Governmental planning, one that conformed more closely to international standards of conservation, rather than the sort of haphazard, "whatever de hardware have" replacement of rotting wood and fixtures and the careless painting of delicately gessoed detailing.
CfC eventually ran out of steam, which wasn't surprising to me after attending one of their meetings, after which I always joked with member Christine Millar that they were really citizens for conversation.
It's alarming to me that today the issues remain disturbingly the same. Any current attempt by the Government to respect the notion of national heritage remains a token effort, as gutted by bureaucracy and toothlessness as the Environmental Management Agency, whose directives are routinely ignored by developers.
The dialogue surrounding the preservation effort is still riddled with the kind of expressions of upper-middle class disdain that turns off possible supporters and raises the hackles of government representatives who want their efforts to be respected by that nebulous group they think of as "the masses."
Comments like "If we destroy this building, we are savages with no hope," "Let us cherish our heritage" and "save us from ourselves" left on the petition page for the website position the dialogue in a space that leaves the most powerful voices in Trinidad and Tobago politics out of the discussion.
Compounding this sense of exclusivity is the history of most of the architectural treasures around the Savannah, the former homes of wealthy, landed gentry, the sort of folk who were at some remove from the man in the street then and now.
I believe that the effort being put into directing the sale of the Boissiere house would be more sustainable if it embraced all of the heritage of Trinidad and Tobago. If we are going to help the Boissiere family to sell their home in a way that their contribution to the history of Trinidad and Tobago is preserved, then we should also be working to save Juggassar House in Chaguanas built in 1919 by the son of Ocha, an indentured worker from India.
The pressure has to be more effectively placed on the Government to develop, support and deploy resources to preserve all aspects of the nation's heritage. At this juncture, that is more clearly necessary than ever, as President's House and other buildings which are part of the national patrimony and are unquestionably Government property, fall steadily into ruin. Blogger Sharon Millar takes note of that issue here.
But lasting change won't happen until everyone feels involved and invested in the preservation effort, until the issue is brought home in that kind of personal way, the issue will continue to be largely ignored by the larger public, whose concerns are the first items on the agenda of the politicians who can change the nature of this discourse.
Doing that is going to mean identifying many different and geographically dispersed examples of our national heritage and creating discussion and interest around them where they exist, encouraging knowledge tours by schoolchildren and bringing history back to communities in a way that excites and intrigues. When a politician's child comes home and asks if they are going to knock down a house, building or historical site that they have drawn and studied at school; the discussion about saving our heritage will have a fundamentally different tone.
The house, one of the remarkable old homes around the Savannah, though not one counted as part of the row described as the Magnificent Seven, is on the market for TT$63 million and the prevailing fear is that anyone who buys the property will promptly bulldoze 12 Queen's Park West to make "better" use of what is now prime real estate overlooking the city.
The first entry on a blog that I can find is on The Bookman's site here, but Laughlin's blog entry raised the ante to activism.
Since then, Georgia Popplewell, Sean Leonard and Laughlin have done admirable work in bringing the issue to national attention, and there is now a website dedicated to the issue, though it would be churlish to point out that the TV6 report on the issue used extensive footage of Mlle Fleur, one of the Magnificent Seven in particular disrepair. One collapsing national treasure might seem to be as good as another for cutaways.
Almost 20 years ago, I assisted a similar movement initiated by the Citizens for Conservation which stepped in at a critical juncture in the history of the George Brown house, which was in danger of being bulldozed to make way for a modern structure. In the end, the house was clumsily grafted into the development, but remained standing. Citizens for Conservation moved on to Stollmeyer Castle, successfully pushing the Government to take control of the building and stem an alarming degree of rot.
The CfC was, I believe, a presence that made the refurbishment of the adjacent White House, once the seat of Governmental planning, one that conformed more closely to international standards of conservation, rather than the sort of haphazard, "whatever de hardware have" replacement of rotting wood and fixtures and the careless painting of delicately gessoed detailing.
CfC eventually ran out of steam, which wasn't surprising to me after attending one of their meetings, after which I always joked with member Christine Millar that they were really citizens for conversation.
It's alarming to me that today the issues remain disturbingly the same. Any current attempt by the Government to respect the notion of national heritage remains a token effort, as gutted by bureaucracy and toothlessness as the Environmental Management Agency, whose directives are routinely ignored by developers.
The dialogue surrounding the preservation effort is still riddled with the kind of expressions of upper-middle class disdain that turns off possible supporters and raises the hackles of government representatives who want their efforts to be respected by that nebulous group they think of as "the masses."
Comments like "If we destroy this building, we are savages with no hope," "Let us cherish our heritage" and "save us from ourselves" left on the petition page for the website position the dialogue in a space that leaves the most powerful voices in Trinidad and Tobago politics out of the discussion.
Compounding this sense of exclusivity is the history of most of the architectural treasures around the Savannah, the former homes of wealthy, landed gentry, the sort of folk who were at some remove from the man in the street then and now.
I believe that the effort being put into directing the sale of the Boissiere house would be more sustainable if it embraced all of the heritage of Trinidad and Tobago. If we are going to help the Boissiere family to sell their home in a way that their contribution to the history of Trinidad and Tobago is preserved, then we should also be working to save Juggassar House in Chaguanas built in 1919 by the son of Ocha, an indentured worker from India.
The pressure has to be more effectively placed on the Government to develop, support and deploy resources to preserve all aspects of the nation's heritage. At this juncture, that is more clearly necessary than ever, as President's House and other buildings which are part of the national patrimony and are unquestionably Government property, fall steadily into ruin. Blogger Sharon Millar takes note of that issue here.
But lasting change won't happen until everyone feels involved and invested in the preservation effort, until the issue is brought home in that kind of personal way, the issue will continue to be largely ignored by the larger public, whose concerns are the first items on the agenda of the politicians who can change the nature of this discourse.
Doing that is going to mean identifying many different and geographically dispersed examples of our national heritage and creating discussion and interest around them where they exist, encouraging knowledge tours by schoolchildren and bringing history back to communities in a way that excites and intrigues. When a politician's child comes home and asks if they are going to knock down a house, building or historical site that they have drawn and studied at school; the discussion about saving our heritage will have a fundamentally different tone.
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