Magnificent Seven (Port of Spain)
The Magnificent Seven are an ensemble of seven buildings built at the beginning of the 20th century in the Trinidadian capital Port of Spain .
General
The buildings are located in the St. Clair district. They were built along Maraval Road, which is directly adjacent to Queen's Park Savannah , a park and the largest open area within the Port of Spains. Originally there was a state dairy farm on the site of today's building complex, but it was moved to Valsayn in 1899 . Since Queen's Park Savannah had functioned as Port of Spains' largest urban park since around 1830, the part of the area that was freed up next to the Savannah in particular represented an attractive building area. In 1902, seven building plots were parceled out at this point, three of which the city administration designated for public Buildings reserved, the other four were auctioned. The land was bought by wealthy locals. In 1904, construction began on six of the seven lots; Hayes Court followed in 1910. St. Clair was suddenly transformed into an exclusive residential area by the Magnificent Seven . Due to the architectural importance of the ensemble for the cityscape, most of the buildings were bought by the government towards the end of the 20th century, so that today only one building is privately owned. The buildings neither have a uniform style, nor do they follow to a significant extent style specifications from the building eras of the colonial powers of the time. Rather, existing architectural styles from different epochs were freely adapted and adapted to the aesthetic perception and climatic conditions of the southern Caribbean islands.
Queen's Royal College
The southernmost of the seven buildings is the most renowned school in Trinidad, where VS Naipaul and Eric Williams, among others , went to school. The college designed in the style of the Renaissance, called "QRC" for short, was mainly built by the German architect Daniel Meinerts Hahn, who himself was a former QRC graduate and worked full-time for the Department of Public Works and in this capacity also for the Trinidadian parliament building ( "Red House") and the Royal Victoria Institute. The foundation stone was laid in 1902 by the then British Governor of Trinidad, Courtney Knollys. The QRC had existed under the name Queen's Collegiate School since 1859, was given its current name in 1870 and initially resided in the Prince's Building on Frederick Street and moved into its current domicile when it was opened in March 1904 by British Governor Sir Alfred Maloney. Originally, six classrooms for 30 students each and an auditorium with 550 seats were available for teaching, today the QRC accommodates around 1200 students. The building has a striking, 28-meter-high bell tower and two wing wings that are connected to the central wing via arcades. The bell tower is optically divided by a projecting cornice at a height of around 20 meters ; directly above is a clock named Edward VII Memorial Clock , installed in 1913 .
Hayes Court
The second building in the ensemble, seen from the south, is the seat of the Anglican bishop. The house is named after James Thomas Hayes (* 1847, † 1904), the second Anglican bishop of Trinidad and Tobago. The house was built in 1910 by the construction company Taylor & Gillies under the architect George Brown in a mixture of the French and English architectural styles of the time. Brown was also the architect of the neighboring house, Mille Fleurs. Hayes Court has been used continuously as a bishopric since it was built, with the exception of the tenure of Bishop Arthur Henry Anstey (1918–1945), who rented the house to the French consul for financial reasons. The money was used to maintain church schools in Trinidad. Compared to the other Magnificent Seven, Hayes Court is architecturally less conspicuous, but is classified as a notable example of colonial architecture because of its typical George Brown cast iron columns and parapets and the clearly protruding gables. The rear of the house has been expanded over the years to accommodate offices for the diocese.
Mille Fleurs
The third building was originally the home of the Venezuelan doctor and mayor of Port of Spain from 1914 to 1918, Henrique Prada, whose wife gave the house its name. The architect was the Scot George Brown. Prada lived in Mille Fleurs until 1933 and then sold the house to the merchant and Italian consul Joseph Salvatori (1933), whose family continued to reside in Mille Fleurs after his death in 1959. Salvatori's granddaughter Mrs. Pierre Lelong then moved to Paris and sold Mille Fleurs in 1973 to the merchant George Matouk, who never lived in it. After a long vacancy, the building was bought by the government in 1979 for TT $ 1 million to provide space for the National Security Council, but this never happened. Mille Fleurs is still not used. The ground floor is surrounded by a wide veranda that goes around the entire house. A two-story extension with a small winter garden and balcony protrudes over the front of the house in the middle above the entrance. To the left of this, a two-storey tower with a conical roof forms the southeastern end of the building; to the right, a hexagonal bay window is crowned by a cast-iron balustrade. In the middle of the driveway in front of the house is a fountain with two figures. Mille Fleurs has been in an advanced state of decay for years. A renovation under the auspices of several ministries was planned from the beginning of the 2010s and completed in 2020 with the handover of the building to the National Trust .
Roomor
The fourth building, also known as Ambard's House, was commissioned by cocoa plantation owner Lucien F. Ambard and built by the architect George Brown in the French baroque style of the colonial era. Ambard had Italian marble and tiles imported from France specially imported for this purpose built in and on the building; the wood for the construction came from Erin in Siparia in the extreme southwest of Trinidad. He lived in the house until 1919 when his mortgage was foreclosed by the Gordon Grant & Company banking house. The next owner, Pointz MacKenzie, went bankrupt in 1923, and the house again fell to Gordon Grant, who from 1925 to 1940 rented it to the Guyana-born cinema mogul William Pettigrew Humphrey. In 1940 the house was bought by Timothy Roodal from Fyzabad , a businessman and political companion of Uriah Butler who was also active in the cinema industry . The building is still owned by Roodal's family and was named "Roomor" by his granddaughter, Yvonne Morgan, after the first letters of her and her grandfather's surname. It has a multitude of domes, bay windows and balconies with ornate, wrought-iron railings. The cast iron columns that support the balcony around the first floor come from the British company Braithwaites and have been represented by them in their catalogs for years. It is the only one of the Magnificent Seven privately owned and, as it is made almost entirely of wood, it needs constant renovations.
Archbishop's Palace
The fifth building, also known as the Archbishop's House, is the official seat of the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Port of Spain. Before the house was built, the respective archbishop resided in St. Joseph's monastery in Uptown. The builder and first resident of the new building was Archbishop Patrick Vincent Flood, after whom the only cross street that intersects the Magnificent Seven was named. The architect of the Archbishop's Palace was, like many of the magnificent Port of Spains buildings of the time, the Irishman George Brown. The neo-Romanesque style building was built with red granite and Irish marble. The most noticeable structural feature is a tower with a bay tower. The windows of the tower have semicircular arches, at the top it is closed by a crenellated parapet. The bay tower has loopholes. These design features give the building a somewhat medieval appearance with echoes of medieval Byzantine architecture. The semicircular arches are continued in arcades on the ground floor and first floor; in the latter they form a gallery around the building. At the southwest corner of the property is a small chapel dedicated to St. Clare . In 1968 the Archbishop's Palace was renovated under the leadership of the architect Sonny Sellier, whereby the original interior design was massively changed.
Whitehall
The sixth building was built by the Corsican cocoa plantation owner Joseph Léon Agostini. In terms of living space, it is the largest building in the Magnificent Seven and its style is reminiscent of Venetian palaces; white coral sandstone was imported from Barbados for the construction. However, Agostini had the building painted pink and gave it the German name "Rosenweg", which is still in use today as an alternative name. In 1906, after Agostini's unexpected death, his family had to sell the house, which was heavily burdened with mortgages, to businessman Robert Henderson, who painted it white and gave it its current name. In 1940 the US military, with the consent of the British colonial rulers, confiscated the building, used it for administrative purposes and only returned it in 1944. The building was rented to the British Council for the next ten years and subsequently functioned as a cultural center, in which, among other things, the Whitehall Players drama group, the Trinidad Art Society and the Government Broadcasting Unit resided, as well as the administration of the Trinidad Central Library Housed building. In 1954 it was bought by the government. In 1958 the building served as the seat of the interim government of the short-lived West Indian Federation . From 1961 to 1986 and from 1999 to 2009 Whitehall served as the prime minister's residence. The building has been empty since then. In 2001 it was used as the location for the film adaptation of the Naipaul novel The Mystic Masseur . Winged stairs lead to the entrance veranda, flanked by two bronze guardian statues, which is closed to the front by Moorish arches. A roof terrace enclosed by a balustrade forms the largest part of the third floor, in the middle of which the pavilion named "Blue Room" is built. The building has a basement, which is an absolute exception for historical buildings Port of Spains; in the basement there is a kitchen and pantry, staff rooms and a wine cellar.
Stollmeyer's Castle
The seventh, northernmost and oldest building of the Magnificent Seven, also known as the Killarney , was built by Scottish architect Robert Gillies of the construction company Taylor and Gillies for German-born industrialist Charles Fourier Stollmeyer. Stollmeyer was a pioneer in the asphalt industry in Trinidad. He never lived in Stollmeyer's Castle himself, but gave it to his son Charles Conrad Stollmeyer for his wedding; the name "Killarney" was given to the house by Charles Conrad's wife. From 1940 to 1944 the building, like the neighboring house, was confiscated by the US military, during which time the name "Stollmeyer's Castle" became established. The house remained family-owned until 1972, when it was sold to insurance broker Jesse Henry Mahabir, who resold it to the government in 1979. The stylistic model for the design was Balmoral Castle , the summer residence of the British Queen. The walls are made of imported, pale yellow bricks, adorned with local blue-gray limestone. The open veranda around the ground floor is laid out with Italian marble. The cast iron columns that support the roofs of the veranda are decorated with horse motifs. The north-eastern wing with a Dutch pitched roof is unusually oriented not like the rest of the house to the street in the east, but to the northeast.
Web links
- Magnificent Seven on the Citizens For Conservation Trinidad & Tobago website
Individual evidence
- ↑ Michael Anthony: Historic Landmarks of Port of Spain. Macmillan Caribbean, 2008, p. 61.
- ↑ Trinidad's forgotten architectural gems. In: The Guardian. February 16, 2015.
- ↑ Michael Anthony: Historic Landmarks of Port of Spain. 2008, p. 63.
- ↑ CitizensForConservationTT.org Hayes Court. Retrieved July 13, 2020 .
- ↑ Private blog entry. Retrieved May 8, 2015 .
- ↑ CitizensForConservationTT.org: Mille Fleurs. Retrieved July 13, 2020 .
- ^ Project page of the Urban Development Corporation (UDeCOTT). Retrieved May 14, 2015 .
- ↑ Rishard Khan: Mille Fleurs handed over to the National Trust . In: Trinidad Guardian . August 6, 2020.
- ^ Olga J. Mavrogordato: Voices in the Street. Inprint Caribbean, 1977, p. 133.
- ↑ Private blog entry. Retrieved May 14, 2015 .
- ↑ Michael Anthony: Historic Landmarks of Port of Spain. 2008, p. 67.
Coordinates: 10 ° 40 ′ 12 ″ N , 61 ° 31 ′ 9 ″ W.