PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad — After languishing for more than five years on the international real estate market, Boissiere House, a much-photographed dwelling also known as the Gingerbread House, has finally been bought and restored, and its owners have received a heritage award for the work done on the project.
The house was built in 1904 on the edge of the green space known as Queen’s Park Savannah by C.E.H. Boissière, a prominent businessman, and was long the home of mixed-race descendants of French merchants and plantation owners. In 2013 it was purchased by the Sammy family, wealthy Indo-Trinidadians who made their fortune in the island’s booming construction industry.
The family patriarch, Junior Elgin Sammy, bought the house as a gift to himself for his 61st birthday. The Sammys took ownership in November 2013, and the renovation work began immediately, said Shivonne Sammy Maharaj, Mr. Sammy’s daughter.
“We basically bought a dilapidated, broken shell and aimed to restore its magnificence,” Ms. Sammy Maharaj said in an email. “Our main challenge in the restoration would be to not break anything, not change anything and of course to not offend anyone with our decisions.” Though the Sammys declined to say how much they paid for the house, three years ago the asking price was 20 million Trinidadian dollars, or about $3.15 million.
The work on the 3,500-square-foot house was carried out under the oversight of the heritage architect Rudylynn De Four Roberts, and was accomplished so effectively that the National Trust of Trinidad and Tobago recognized the project with a historic restoration award in 2014.
The decision by Mr. Sammy to buy and renovate the house was a rare one on an island with little tradition of preserving its built heritage. Indeed, Ms. Roberts said buildings that are important to Trinidad and Tobago historically and culturally continue to be imperiled.


She told the story of the Greyfriars Church of Scotland, a 19th-century building in Port of Spain that was bought last year by a businessman, who promptly moved to demolish it. The local group Citizens for Conservation, to which Ms. Roberts belongs, intervened and “was able to save that building,” she said. “Otherwise it would have come down.”
For Mr. Sammy, the acquisition of Boissiere House was a childhood dream fulfilled.
As Ms. Sammy Maharaj explained it, “as a young boy, my father would go for Sunday drives with his parents to Port of Spain, and always admired the historical majestic homes around the Queen’s Park Savannah. He imagined one day owning one of these homes, and as he grew his ambition of this never changed.”
She said that the restoration of the house had been a family project involving her mother, Linda, her husband, Rajendra Maharaj, and all of her siblings, and that her father has asked his children to keep the house in the family as part of his legacy.


Ms. Roberts said that although work still needed to be done on some aspects of the house, such as the fretwork on the roof that would require specialist joiners, “enough work was done to prevent and to halt further deterioration.”
The house, which Ms. Roberts described as Arts and Crafts in style, with elements of West Indian vernacular architecture, is made of wood and stone. It has four bedrooms and two bathrooms, living and dining areas, a study and both indoor and outdoor kitchens. It also has a wraparound veranda, a classic of West Indian style, whose original mosaic pattern tiles of brown, cream and green have been retained.
Other vernacular elements include Demerara and sash windows, and ornate fretwork above all the doors for ventilation. A dormer window that was meant to keep the attic timbers dry likewise enhances ventilation. The steep, pitched gable roof is decorated extensively with finials.
The interior is painted in cream, with dark wood wainscoting and floors of polished cedar. Where the tops of the walls meet the ceilings there are cornice moldings, and a fancy chandelier in the living room hangs from a ceiling rose.
In decorating the house, Ms. Sammy Maharaj said, “We wanted to relive the era of the house,” but “still needed it to be comfortable and livable.” Keeping that dual objective in mind, they have furnished the house with pieces collected from antiques shops in the United States and Britain, as well as some of her grandparents’ furniture.
Originally published on March 26, 205 by Jewel Fraser, New York Times.

 Chapter from our local history few know about. 
by Historian Angelo Bissessarsingh.
The rocky limestone islet perhaps was used as a temporary prison depot around 1854 when Superintendent of Prisons Daniel Hart lodged some convicts who were labouring on cutting a channel for small boats through Pointe Gourde. This waterway was named Hart’s Cut after its innovator sang his own praises and wrote:
“This is a Canal cut across the Isthmus of Chaguaramas 2,165 feet in length, 15 feet in width, and four feet deep from the banks. The cutting was suggested by Mr Daniel Hart, Superintendent of Prisons, approved of by the Governor, Sir Charles Elliot, KC, and ordered to be carried out under Mr Hart’s superintendence by means of convict labour.’
The work was completed on May 29, 1856…….. To the inhabitants of Chaguaramas, Monos, and Chacachacare, the cut is one of the greatest of boons that could have been conferred, obviating as it does, the necessity (as previously) of going round the dangerous passage by Point Gourde, a place where many people have lost their lives.”
In 1966, the canal which had served so many for so long was filled in and is now the carpark for prison officers on the island. In 1866 Carrera became a short-lived quarantine depot for Indian indentured labour before the facility moved to Nelson Island. Around 1875 convicts were set to work “bussin stone” to provide hard punishment and supply road metal to the Public Works Department.
This was done on a starvation diet of a few biscuits and tea twice daily and a midday pint of soup. It was the harshest form of incarceration for in those days: prisoners did not enjoy holidays at taxpayers’ expense as they now do, but were pressed into chain gangs for the maintenance of public infrastructure (cemeteries, road verges, etc) or else quarried on Carrera and its neighbour, Kronstadt Island.
In 1876 construction of a huge stone-walled prison complex was initiated and completed by 1880. Prisoners from a defunct convict timber depot in Longdenville and later, one in the Irois forest, were crowded into tiny cells. For many years the Superintendent of Prisons was Capt Percy Fraser, who implemented many changes and saw incarceration as both a stern process and one intended to reform and modify the character of the offender.
During World War I (1914-18), Carrera prisoners were used to erect a gun on Gaspar Grande Island, having to cut the roadway to the top of a steep hill and then dragging the massive weapon by hand all the way under the personal supervision of Capt Fraser and the governor of the colony himself, Sir John Chancellor. Towards the end of Percy Fraser’s administration in 1931 there was a prison riot, which saw the warders being held hostage until the situation was defused by the arrival of Fraser himself.
A Commission of Enquiry was appointed to look into the colony’s penal system and massive revisions implemented, including an expansion of the facilities on the island. Adult literacy classes, movie nights and trade-school were some of the improvements but may have failed to make an impact on all, since one of the most infamous products of the system in this period was Boysie Singh, the pirate, gangster and murderer who paid for his crimes at the end of a hangman’s rope.
For all the upgrades to the system it must not be imagined that Carrera was paradise. There was once an epidemic of blindness among the Indian prisoners. Many were there for the crime of wife-murder, which was prevalent at the period. Apparently, a rumour spread that blind prisoners would be released and repatriated to India, where there were native doctors who could restore their sight.
The blindness was achieved by catching crabs on the rocky shoreline and squeezing the toxic bile from their innards into the eyes, which caused rapid inflammation and loss of sight. On another occasion, a prisoner convicted of a sexual offence contrived to silently amputate his own testicles, which were later kept in alcohol in the prison infirmary as a curiosity.
At times Carrera could indeed be akin to the other famous island-prison, Alcatraz, which seems to whisper Dante’s words: “Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.” Yet among this there are positive stories, one of which is quite personal to me.
After leaving his father’s cocoa estate in Siparia to see service during World War II, 21-year-old Eulick Bissessarsingh became a prison officer in His Majesty’s service, being posted to facilities in the Bahamas and St Vincent before being stationed at Carrera Island, where he remained until 1954. Of his time on Trinidad’s Devil Island, Eulick always remarked that aside from the odd disturbance or two, jailbirds and warders shared a kinship, since the long furloughs of duty (sometimes lasting weeks) made them all prisoners.
This is not to say that the jail was a social club. Misdemeanours amongst the inmates were punished with solitary confinement in a cell reeking with sewage, floggings with the cat-o’-nine tails (a dreadful whip) and a single meal of bread and water daily. It is perhaps no surprise that on several occasions, prisoners dared swim the shark-infested channel separating the island from Chaguaramas in a desperate bid for freedom.
Amidst this terror was another young man, Rupert “Archie” Archibald, who, like Eulick, hailed from Siparia—his crime, murder. Archie at age 14 lived under the shadow of abuse and being unable to see his stepfather brutalise his mother any longer, took up an axe and cleft the man’s skull.
Eulick and Archie fast became friends behind the ominous walls of Carrera. An accomplished artist, the prison warder passed on his skills to the inmate and also taught him to read and write. Eulick also interceded on Archie’s behalf in writing several times, understanding that Archie’s offence was a crime of necessity.
Eulick left the prison service in the 1950s and a couple of years after, Archie was granted his freedom and the two renewed their old friendship back in their hometown of Siparia. The ex-convict took on a new mantle as the Midnight Robber every Carnival in a most impressive form, his towering stature and expressive lyrics making him one of the past-masters of ole mas. His elaborate costume was designed and constructed by Eulick
Many years after his friend died in 1986, I remember Archie—then a very old man and nearly blind—tottering up the steep poui-lined driveway leading to our home. He would sit and regale us for hours with stories of Carrera and his life before, as well as the times he and Eulick, my grandfather, shared as friends.
Archie gave me a bay-leaf tree which he asked me to plant in Eulick’s memory, which I did, in 1993, and it still thrives. Archie is dead now, ending a great friendship of seemingly impossible origins that began and lasted on Carrera Island.
It is my fervent hope as a historian that Carrera Island will be preserved as a relic of our past and can serve as a beacon for tourism which has already proven to be a practical use for old island prisons at Alcatraz and Devil’s Island.

​Jack Yufe, founder of Yufe's haberdashery store in Trinidad and Tobago, had an unusual life that attracted international attention.
Yufe had an identical twin brother Oskar Stohr, and the two had radically different lives that may well be suited to a movie.
Born in Trinidad in January 1933, Yufe and Stohr were separated at six months old, when their parents divorced.
Yufe stayed in Trinidad with their Jewish father, Joseph, who was Jewish, while Stohr moved to Germany with their Catholic mother, Elizabeth, and grew up as the Nazis rose to power.
Yufe was raised Jewish, and contributed to the landscape of T&T's textile industry.
He eventually joined the Israeli Navy, worked on a kibbutz, and moved with his father to San Diego, USA, to run a small store.
Stohr was raised Catholic, kept his Jewish ancestry a secret. Like his fellow students, he greeted the school principal with "Heil, Hitler," and was warned by his grandmother to never let on that his father was Jewish. As an act of survival, Stohr joined the Hitler Youth movement, an organisation for young people in the Nazi Party
According to the Los Angeles Times, Yufe reuinted with his long-lost twin in 1954 when he traveled to Germany to find Stohr.
The two found they had very similar habits, mannerisms, hairstyles and style of dress. But they spoke no common language and were unable to communicate well.
Yufe found out enough to tell the LA Times that Stohr avoided letting anti-Semitic family members know his brother was Jewish and had been in Israel.
He said that upon arriving in Germany, Storh told him to remove his name tags from his luggage and hide his Jewish identity for the duration of his stay. Yufe lasted a week in Germany before packing up and going home.
The two did not meet again until 1979, when Yufe learned about a University of Minnesota study about twins, and wanted to participate.
In addition, Yufe and Stohr were featured in other films about twins, according to the Times.
Of all the twins who participated in the Minnesota study, Yufe and Stohr had the most contrasting backgrounds.
“Jack and his brother clearly have the greatest differences in background I’ve ever seen among identical twins reared apart,” Thomas J. Bouchard Jr., the University of Minnesota psychologist who headed the study, told The Times in 1979.
After some time, their families noticed, they began to form a bond that was close to something brotherly. At least, they said, the hate seemed to subside.
However, their upbringings never stopped being a problem. Over time they just learned to avoid topics like religion and the war.
Cal State Fullerton psychology professor Nancy Segal wrote a book on the brothers aptly titled “Indivisible by Two: Lives of Extraordinary Twins.”
Segal told the Times that the twins had an “extraordinary love-hate relationship”.
Eventually, Yufe said he learned not to blame his brother for the circumstances that landed them on opposite sides of a deadly war.
Yufe reportedly told Segal that he did not blame his brother for participating in the Hitler Youth.
"Children have no say in what they are taught", he said. "If we had been switched, I would have taken Oskar's place for sure."
Stohr, who had worked in coal mines, died of lung cancer in 1997 at age 64.
Yufe died of stomach cancer in San Diego in 2015 at age 82.
PHOTO: Jack Yufe, left, with his identical brother Oskar. Robert Lachman/Los Angeles Times/AP
Sources:
www.haaretz.com 
www.losangelestimes.com 
www.independent.co.uk 
http://allthatsinteresting.com
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The first group of Jews in Trinidad arrived in 1783 with the Cedula of Population, when Trinidad – an underpopulated Spanish colony – opened its borders to Europeans. 
The second group came in when slavery was abolished in 1838.
The third wave of Jewish immigration occurred during and after World War II when European Jews were fleeing the the Nazis. Many of them held German and Austrian passports.

Boysie Singh was a notorious Trinidadian killer who was eventually hanged for murder in the mid-1950s.
Born at 17 Louis Street, Woodbrook, on April 5, 1908, he grew up to be a gambler, thief, arsonist, pirate, and mass murderer.
Singh’s father Bhagrang Singh was himself a fugitive from justice, who reportedly fled India to Trinidad.
Singh started doing petty crime, even spending time at Carrera Island Prison in the 1940s.
Following prison, he ran gambling clubs and brothels, moved on to the protections racket, and was known to set fire to cars or buildings when "clients" would not pay up.
Later, he smuggled goods from Cedros to Caracas, then resorted to piracy. From 1947 to 1956, Singh and his henchmen terrorised local fishermen and Venezuelan smugglers. They would kill a crew, steal their goods and engines, and sink the boat.
Singh broadened his criminal reach to include human trafficking, smuggling illegal immigrants some of whom he would rob or kill.
Along the way, it is reported, he murdered hundreds of people. Legend has it that some victims were made to "walk the plank", in the tradition of old-time Caribbean pirates, and plunge to their death at sea.
Twice, Singh was charged by the police. In one case, he got off due to lack of evidence. In the other, he was convicted but won on appeal and was released.
Eventually, Singh's luck ran out when he was convicted for the murder of a dancer. All appeals failed, and he was sentenced to death.
Boysie Singh was hanged at the Royal Gaol in Port-of-Spain on August 20, 1957.
Source: Breaking News T&T, Feb 2019

​This area was called Coolie Town when former Indian indentured labourers settled there after the expiration of their their five-year contracts.

By the 1890s the area expanded to eventually become what is now known as St James.

The new name was apparently taken from the main street through the area - St James Street (which became Tragarete Road).

St James Street got its name from the nearby St James Barracks.

Other street names recognised the nationality of the inhabitants. Therefore, Delhi Street, Agra Street etc.

Coolie Town had emerged on an area that Sir Ralph Abercromby had landed his troops to seize Trinidad from the Spanish in 1797.

The estate became the property of the Devinish family who, by the 1850s, sold tracts of land to merchant families like the Stones and Salazars.

It was during that period that Indian labourers began to arrive to work on plantations.

From about 1870, the area started to be called Coolie Town as the Indian labourers whose contracts had ended began renting estate lands for farming. Among them were craftsmen, including jewelers whose work made the area commercially popular.

St James was incorporated in the City of Port-of-Spain in 1917.
Source:  Dominic Kalipersad, March 2019

​Fort Abercromby located at Las Cuevas. Heard about this place and went to take a few pictures. The Fort was originally built around 1797 by Governor Sir Thomas Picton and was intended to be used as a supply point for the British if they were ever compelled to abandon Port of Spain and as a point of exit if they should need to exit the island. The fort was destroyed when the officer in charge mistakenly anticipated defeat by a large fleet approaching. He burnt the huts, spiked the guns and retreated over the hills. The fleet turned out to be Lord Nelson's en-route to the battle of Trafalgar.
Below we have an aerial view of the whole Fort area, the stairs leading to where the Fort Lookout was located, what remains of the Fort's cannons and an aerial view of the cannons. Credit: K S L Photography

​Sangre Grande was a town which grew out of the cocoa boom of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The Trinidad Government Railway reached the little settlement in 1897 and from them on, it grew by leaps and bounds, becoming the chief town of Northeastern Trinidad. This postcard scene dates from around 1905 and shows Sangre Grande in its heyday as the centre for the cocoa wealth of the area. At the very far end of the street is the old police station while the covered sidewalks are reminiscent of an American wild west town.
Source:  Virtual Museum of Trinidad and Tobago