Building on strong foundation.

• Author: Sletto, Bjorn
• Position: Restoration of grand old houses in Port of Spain, Trinidad

Grands old houses in Port of Spain, Trinidad, are getting more than a face-lift, as public and private sectors promote historic restoration

Joseph Agostini once built a house in Port of Spain. He built it just west of the Queen's Park Savannah, so the morning sun could tint the facade a luscious gold, and the dew would sparkle on the wrought-iron balconies. For walls he chose Barbados coral and poured concrete painted white, fitted seamlessly into a grand tribute to Venetian architecture that he designed himself. The porch steps were Italian marble and the veranda tiles imported from England, for this was 1904, Agostini's cacao plantations were bringing in a fortune, and he could afford it.

But if Agostini had seen his beloved White Hall a year ago, he would have wept in despair. The marble steps were chipped and the plaster ceilings drooping. The facade was cracking like a split lip on a cold winter's day. The floor boards had been slowly consumed by termites and by rot; the tin ceilings were stained beyond repair; and the gilded, varnished trim had been painted over and cut to make room for air-conditioning vents and power outlets.

"Every day I drove by the building, it looked worse," recalls Rudylynn Roberts, head of the Historic Restoration Unit of the Trinidad and Tobago Ministry of Works and Transport. "More plaster would have fallen down, the cracks would be larger, the building would be leaning even more."

But there is finally hope for White Hall, and for the many other, neglected historic buildings in Port of Spain. The government has embarked on an $8 million (Trinidad dollars; TT) program to restore White Hall. The restoration project, overseen by Roberts's Restoration Unit and funded by the government, began in September 1994. Today, after a year and a half of emergency structural rehabilitation, the government-owned mansion has been saved from imminent collapse. In addition, a historic preservation group - the Citizens for Conservation - has been formed, and the National Trust Act has been passed.

This new emphasis on historic preservation came not a moment too soon, according to Trinidadians concerned about saving the islands past. "Port of Spain has this wonderful architectural heritage," says Colin Laird, a Port of Spain architect with forty-three years' experience in historic preservation. "If we could save what we have left, we'd have more historic buildings than most other Caribbean cities."

This architectural wealth is rooted in Trinidad's multicultural heritage. First discovered by Christopher Columbus on his third voyage in 1498, Trinidad was not settled by the Spanish until the early seventeenth century. Most early Spanish settlers were looking for gold and precious minerals and found little of interest in Trinidad. Also, the fierce and warlike Caribs drove away many of the early Spanish settlers. In 1783, in an attempt to speed up the settlement of the sparsely populated island, the Spanish called on Roman Catholics of all nationalities to move to Trinidad in exchange for land. The Seven Years' War between England and France had just ended, and many French planters from the former French islands of Guadeloupe, Grenada, and Martinique took advantage of...