Frederick Street
The Frederick Street is a street in the district of Downtown of Trinidad and Tobago's capital Port of Spain . As a centrally located shopping street with progressive architecture, it was considered the “main street of the city” from the 1890s to the 1980s.
course
Most of the streets in the Downtown district are aligned in the shape of a rectangular grid. This form goes back to the last Spanish governor of the island José María Chacón , who accompanied the rapid growth of the city from 1784 with extensive planning. Frederick Street runs in a straight line from south to north. It starts at Independence Square , a long, long square steeped in history near the coast. As a classic shopping street, it passes shops, cafes and restaurants and crosses the important cross streets of Queen Street and Duke Street, which run in a west-east direction, before reaching a central square in the city, Woodford Square , which is home to the Houses of Parliament and the Holy Trinity Cathedral are located. Approximately at the level of the middle of Frederick Street, it passes the lively Park Street, which runs from Lapeyrouse Cemetary to East Dry River in a west-east direction, and changes its character from a shopping street to residential and administrative buildings before moving on 1.6 kilometers at its northern end opens into the southeast corner of the park-like Queen's Park Savannah .
history
Today's Frederick Street is one of the oldest streets in the city and was built by the Spanish, who owned the island of Trinidad until 1797. Until the arrival of Governor Chacón in 1784, Port of Spain consisted of a single street, the Calle de la Marina, which at that time was still directly on the sea and today, after some land reclamation, forms Independence Square. Under Chacón, the population of the city increased significantly and new streets became necessary - one of the first was the Calle de San Carlos, named after the Spanish King Charles II . In Chacón's time, the majority of the island's population was French, and the street was popularly named in French, namely Rue des Anglais . It led along the Rio Santa Ana (today's St. Ann's River), which regularly flooded the area. From 1785 to 1787, Chacón had the river diverted to the east, sustainably promoting the development of the road. After the English came to power in 1797, it was renamed Frederick Street . The namesake was Friedrich Ludwig von Hannover , who held the title of Prince of Wales in the 18th century .
In 1808, a fire that originated at 12 Frederick Street destroyed most of the city. The house of origin was a shop where flammable substances such as ether and alcohol were sold and stored. In 1837 the Presbyterian Greyfriars Church was built at Woodford Square (then still Brunswick Square) , which was the center of Presbyterianism in Trinidad. The church was demolished in stages by a private investor in 2014 and 2015 after stormy protests by the population, which even occupied the parliament.
From 1883 the first tramway in Trinidad ran along Frederick Street . On December 27th of that year, a fixed route was added between the train station at Marina Square in the south and Queen's Park Savannah in the north to allow guests from the rest of the island to comfortably attend the Christmas horse race in the Savannah. The trams were initially pulled by mules; Electricity wasn't introduced to the island until March 1895. From 1895 to 1950, an electric tram ran along Frederick Street.
In the 1890s, Frederick Street was the main shopping street of Port of Spains, and thus of Trinidad. Three of the leading photo studios of the time were located in the street, which was also the scene of all of the city's public processions. At the same time, Frederick Street marked a distinctive dividing line between the upscale residential and commercial district Downtown west of the street and the rather shabby eastern Port of Spain. This division has been maintained to this day, as poorer districts such as East Dry River , Laventille or Sea Lots begin east of Frederick Street . In 1890, the northern part of Frederick Street, which was then called Clarence Street, was the first street in Trinidad to be paved.
On March 4, 1895, a fire destroyed all the buildings along the street in the southernmost block from Marina Square (today's Independence Square) to Queen Street, and buildings in the parallel Henry Street and Chacon Street were also destroyed. The crews of four ships lying in the port of Port of Spain prevented worse things from happening by pushing back onlookers for the local fire brigade and participating in the fire-fighting work. The reconstruction was designed by the Scottish architect George Brown , who applied the latest fire protection findings at the time and had the outer walls built from stone, but also increased the floor heights, provided the buildings with sweeping balconies facing the street and installed generous skylights on the roofs and so on shaped the appearance of Frederick Street until the 1980s.
A shopping institution on Frederick Street was the People's Mall, a maze of small sales booths on the corner of Frederick Street and Queen Street, known for handicrafts and imported fashion. The People's Mall burned down in 2005. In the 2010s, the headquarters ( pan yard ) of the Desperadoes Steel Orchestra was for a while on Frederick Street.
Buildings
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Frederick Street begins in the north at Queen's Park Savannah, an inner-city recreational area that is known by the locals as the "largest roundabout in the world" and is used, among other things, to host carnival events. In the first section, Frederick Street passes the Memorial Park on the left , a green area known until 1924 as "Little Savannah", the center of which is an eponymous cenotaph that commemorates the Trinidadian dead of the Trinidadian who fought for the United Kingdom in the First World War . Across the street from Memorial Park is the iconic building of the National Academy for the Performing Arts and the much smaller National Museum and Art Gallery , the Trinidadian National Museum.
Two blocks away is the Port of Spain Prison, built in 1812 on Frederick Street, and one block away is the building of the Elections and Boundaries Commission. On the further south, Frederick Street passes the renowned Saint Mary's College and the Immigration Office building. Three blocks further, the street meets Woodford Square, a small park which, as a historically significant recreational area and the historically, politically and culturally significant buildings surrounding it, marks a central location in the city. The park was created by the Spanish in 1787 as a military training ground, renamed Brunswick Square by the British and rededicated as a park and named after Governor Ralph Woodford in 1917 . Woodford Square is home to the Parliament Building, the country's most important Anglican Church, the Palace of Justice and the National Library , among others .
The two blocks south of Woodford Square are characterized by shopping centers , retail stores, restaurants and cafes and have a very high level of traffic during business hours. Finally Frederick Street joins Independence Square; A monument to Arthur Cipriani was erected on the site of the confluence .
traffic
Like most streets in Downtown, Frederick Street is a one-way street. In the northernmost section, between Queen's Park West and Keate Street, the traffic runs in a northerly direction, in all other sections in a southerly direction.
A good part of the inner-city, but also supraregional traffic in Trinidad is handled by so-called maxi taxis, privately operated minibuses with usually twelve seats, which follow fixed routes from fixed points, but pick up and drop off passengers at any point along them. The Maxi Taxis to St. Ann’s and St. James leave from Hart Street and Frederick Street.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Michael Anthony: First in Trinidad . 3. Edition. Paria Publishing, Port of Spain 1985, ISBN 976-8054-51-4 , pp. 34 .
- ^ Caribbean History Archives (blog): Street Smart Or, How History Changes Everything. Retrieved December 11, 2019 .
- ^ Gérard A. Besson & Bridget Brereton: The Book of Trinidad . Paria Publishing, Port of Spain 2010, ISBN 978-976-8054-36-4 , pp. 139 .
- ↑ Michael Anthony: Historic Landmarks of Port of Spain . Macmillan Caribbean, Oxford 2008, ISBN 978-0-333-97555-8 , pp. 35 .
- ^ Cabinet to meet on Greyfriars . In: Trinidad Express . 1st December 2014.
- ↑ Michael Anthony: First in Trinidad . 3. Edition. Paria Publishing, Port of Spain 1985, ISBN 976-8054-51-4 , pp. 91 .
- ↑ Stephen Stuempfle: Port of Spain: The Construction of a Caribbean City, 1888-1962 . University of the West Indies Press, Mona 2018, ISBN 978-976-640-663-9 , pp. 38 .
- ↑ Caribbean History Archives (Blog): Electric City Part 3. Retrieved December 11, 2019 .
- ↑ Stephen Stuempfle: Port of Spain: The Construction of a Caribbean City, 1888-1962 . University of the West Indies Press, Mona 2018, ISBN 978-976-640-663-9 , pp. 52 .
- ↑ Angelo Bissessarsingh: Virtual Glimpses into the Past . Queen Bishop Publishing, Marabella 2016, ISBN 978-976-95954-1-5 , pp. 27 .
- ↑ Caribbean History Archives (blog): The Scottish businesses of Frederick Street. Retrieved December 11, 2019 .
- ↑ TrinidadandTobagoNews.com: The People's Mall Destroyed by Fire. Retrieved December 12, 2019 .
- ^ Israel McLeod: Carnival is mine . In: Caribbean Beat . No. 143, January 2017.