A STEP BACK IN TIMELOSING AN ARCHITECTURAL TREASURE : FRIENDSHIP HALL.

A few weeks ago, the coun­try lost one of its most valu­able ar­chi­tec­tur­al trea­sures. For gen­er­a­tions, the mag­nif­i­cent Friend­ship Hall Great House stood astride the South­ern Main Road, just north of St Mary's Junc­tion in Freeport and re­mind­ed us of an era long gone.
Not on­ly was the struc­ture im­pos­ing in its sheer size, but al­so for its ec­cen­tric style and the sto­ry it bore. Con­struct­ed in the 19th cen­tu­ry, it was ini­tial­ly a prime ex­am­ple of colo­nial plan­toc­ra­cy ar­chi­tec­ture which far out­shone the less sub­stan­tial planters' res­i­dences which dot­ted the sug­ar cane fields of cen­tral Trinidad.
Its own­er was an ec­cen­tric Scots­man named Nor­man McLeod who had served as an of­fi­cer in the British East In­di­an Reg­i­ment in the ear­ly 1900s. Whilst in In­dia he ap­par­ent­ly un­der­went a con­ver­sion to Hin­duism and up­on his re­turn to Trinidad he em­ployed his con­sid­er­able artis­tic abil­i­ty in trans­form­ing his pala­tial home in­to a mandir.
On the ground floor, the god­dess Dur­ga peered forth, while on the sweep­ing por­ti­co, McLeod placed a self-por­trait, wear­ing a tur­ban. He even con­struct­ed a throne with the words "Friend­ship Hall" above it. The Scots­man filled his home with price­less trea­sures rang­ing from a World War I Ger­man bu­gle to in­valu­able sil­ver from In­dia.
Gripped with a grow­ing delu­sion that the young daugh­ter of one of his In­di­an ser­vants was a rein­car­na­tion of his dead moth­er, McLeod willed his man­sion to them when he died in 1965. We live how­ev­er, in a na­tion where all but a few place no val­ue on the lega­cy of the ages. Friend­ship Hall fell in­to ne­glect and af­ter near­ly five decades of de­cay, was bull­dozed in­to the ground to make way for con­crete blas­phemies which are a sad trav­es­ty of the Scots­man's gift to his heirs.
As ap­palling as this as­sault on our built her­itage is to con­ceive, it is but a sin­gle chap­ter in a long his­to­ry of an­ni­hi­la­tion which can­not be blamed on any one per­son or sec­tor, since it is a rep­re­hen­si­ble bur­den we must all bear as a peo­ple. The ba­sic ar­gu­ment which may be prof­fered for the fate of Friend­ship Hall is that with­out le­git­i­mate state sup­port, this is to be the fu­ture of many of our his­toric struc­tures which ex­ist in pri­vate hands which are ei­ther un­ap­pre­cia­tive of their sig­nif­i­cance or can­not af­ford to sus­tain them.
Part of the prob­lem stems from a scarci­ty of com­pas­sion and pub­lic ed­i­fi­ca­tion re­gard­ing the val­ue of her­itage as­sets. There are now two min­istries ded­i­cat­ed to mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism and tol­er­ance, yet noth­ing has been done to in­cul­cate a sense of na­tion­al pride in our past.
Stu­dents are still taught that Colum­bus sight­ed Trinidad from the helm of the San­ta Maria ac­com­pa­nied by the Ni­na and Pin­ta, even though he was bare­ly able to walk from a smart at­tack of gout and all three ships had been sunk years be­fore. I dare say if the own­er of Friend­ship Hall Great House had pos­sessed a cul­tured ap­pre­ci­a­tion for what was gift­ed in­to his care, it would not have been de­stroyed. The whole­sale slaugh­ter of leatherback tur­tles but a cou­ple decades ago has been all but halt­ed, thanks large­ly to the foun­da­tion of a sense of own­er­ship which was in­stilled in the minds and hearts of those who shared a com­mon breath­ing space with the tur­tles.
Most com­mu­ni­ties in pos­ses­sion of her­itage as­sets can­not see the eco­nom­ic op­por­tu­ni­ties which can arise from these trea­sures. This is an­oth­er page we can take from the book of the leatherback tur­tle sto­ry, since tur­tle-watch­ing is now a lu­cra­tive mon­ey-earn­er for sev­er­al sec­tors, spawn­ing down­stream in­dus­try on a mi­cro-eco­nom­ic scale.
Lest it be said that I lam­bast the State too stern­ly, an ex­am­ple must be drawn from the aw­ful con­di­tion of the Mag­nif­i­cent Sev­en. These turn-of-the-cen­tu­ry mas­ter­pieces ap­pear in vir­tu­al­ly every tourist guide­book which beck­ons the un­sus­pect­ing to view a spec­ta­cle which must sure­ly stand as an in­dict­ment against us.
From the board­ed-up win­dows and un­kempt lawns of Mille Fleurs to the thread­bare grandeur of White­hall, suc­ces­sive ad­min­is­tra­tions have glee­ful­ly ig­nored their re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to his­to­ry. Those few pub­lic in­sti­tu­tions ded­i­cat­ed to con­ser­va­tion have con­sis­tent­ly failed in their man­dates and seem quite hap­py to con­tin­ue on their los­ing streaks while our past is tram­pled and lost.
I re­cent­ly vis­it­ed the Na­tion­al Mu­se­um and it pains me ex­ceed­ing­ly to see the vast po­ten­tial for pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion there­in and the de­fi­cien­cy of in­ter­est which is shown in it. The prover­bial ic­ing on the cake in the vis­it was that in one sec­tion, arte­facts were strewn willy-nil­ly with no se­cu­ri­ty, beg­ging the sou­venir hunter to pock­et one of our na­tion­al trea­sures.
There is a Restora­tion Unit with­in the Min­istry of Works and In­fra­struc­ture. Had I not been aware of its pres­ence, I would be as stunned as most peo­ple would be to learn that such a high-mind­ed de­part­ment could ex­ist with­in the wreck­age of our civ­il ser­vice. One on­ly has to look at our com­mu­nal ar­chi­tec­tur­al trea­sures to see the im­pact of the unit on the land­scape: the still-caved roof of Pres­i­dent's House, the fire-gut­ted shell of what used to be the his­tor­i­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant San Fer­nan­do Po­lice Sta­tion and the sapling which threat­ened to grow in­to a mighty tree from the roof of the now dis­mal­ly aban­doned Red House.
The lack of zeal or even pe­ri­od­ic en­thu­si­asm from the pub­lic sec­tor to­wards preser­va­tion is re­al­ly an ex­trap­o­la­tion of a na­tion­al men­tal­i­ty which frowns on the past. Our own first prime min­is­ter, Dr Er­ic Williams, was, most iron­i­cal­ly, a his­to­ri­an. Even more than three decades af­ter his death, the ef­fects of "doc­tor pol­i­tics" still shape the gen­er­al psy­che of the na­tion, where­in he trans­ferred his in­ner demons of his own ex­clu­sion from colo­nial elite so­ci­ety to his peo­ple, teach­ing us that all that was con­nect­ed to mas­sa was bad and should be oblit­er­at­ed if we were to find our­selves.
In this way, we in­dem­ni­fy the Plan­ta­tion So­ci­ety mod­el of the late, great Lloyd Best, since our idea of na­tion­al­ism finds ex­pres­sion in rag­ing against the Eu­ro­pean metro­pole and its relics by ex­ten­sion. We are a plur­al so­ci­ety thrown in­to each oth­er's com­pa­ny with no re­al for­ma­tion of the char­ac­ter­is­tics of a na­tion.
Yet, amid the morass of de­struc­tion and cal­lous ig­no­rance, there are bea­cons of hope. For many years, a small band of ded­i­cat­ed peo­ple call­ing them­selves Cit­i­zens for Con­ser­va­tion has been striv­ing against enor­mous odds (po­lit­i­cal ob­sta­cles be­ing the most fre­quent) to raise the na­tion­al con­scious­ness of our her­itage and to per­suade the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties of each ad­min­is­tra­tion to take a vest­ed in­ter­est in preser­va­tion lest all be lost too soon.
I doubt any of the mem­bers of Cit­i­zens for Con­ser­va­tion throw a good javelin or sing melo­di­ous rum-drink­ing dit­ties, but this is an or­gan­i­sa­tion which tru­ly de­serves a medal for the tire­less com­mit­ment to his­to­ry of its mem­bers. Cit­i­zens for Con­ser­va­tion stal­wart ar­chi­tect Ge­of­frey MacLean has de­vot­ed a life­time to con­ser­va­tion and sin­gle­hand­ed­ly re­dis­cov­ered our great 19th-cen­tu­ry artist Michel Jean Caz­abon and his works.
On­ly re­cent­ly Ge­of­frey and I were be­wail­ing the fact that dur­ing the 1970s and well in­to the 1990s, most of our ar­chi­tec­tur­al her­itage had been de­stroyed in the name of progress. Called to mind were the de­mo­li­tion of Bagshot and Per­se­ver­ance Hous­es in Mar­aval, the Ice House Ho­tel on Aber­crom­by Street, Port-of-Spain, and the old Cus­toms House on the wa­ter­front. The loss to pos­ter­i­ty has tru­ly been im­mense. Our most cur­rent di­a­logue on the demise of Friend­ship Hall Great House had a tone akin to that of lament­ing the demise of an old friend.
There is on­ly so much that can be done by those of us who have spent our lives in fer­ret­ing out for­got­ten his­to­ry and cop­ing with the ever-ex­pand­ing waste­land which our her­itage land­scape has be­come. Gov­ern­ment malaise, ig­no­rance of the gen­er­al cit­i­zen­ry and cor­po­rate greed have com­bined to form a daunt­ing front against con­ser­va­tion and as long as we see no val­ue to cher­ish­ing the lega­cy of our an­ces­tors, we face a very grim fu­ture, for it is from the glo­ries and teach­ings of the past we must draw on to find in­spi­ra­tion for to­mor­row. If this is in­deed our lot, where then can fu­ture gen­er­a­tions turn to find them­selves?
Source:  Virtual Museum of T&T Archives (Sept. 08 2012)

---