Urban Architecture: Monuments
As with all cities, changing times bring about changing cultures and changing styles: cities themselves are a product of time. This in turn is manifested upon its architecture, which act as an unwritten record of the times they were built in: time itself becomes visible (Mumford 1938). Port of Spain, throughout its history, had a diverse culture due to the presence of different colonial powers, and each of these in turn left their marks upon the city. In this blog post we will compare two very different structures from different time periods, and see how this links to the theories of synecdoche and the multiplex city.
The first picture shows the Stollmeyer Castle (dubbed ‘Killarney’ by Mrs Stollmeyer), one of the Magnificent Seven located around the western end of the Queen’s Park Savannah. The 102-year-old building resembles a medieval castle, without a draw bridge or a moat (Long 2006)[1]. Its Scottish Baronial architecture is clearly identifiable from its bartizan turrets, crenelated battlements and balustrades. Evidence of Germanic influence is also apparent from the tall spires characteristic of Gothic architecture. The structure itself was built for Charles and Amy Stollmeyer in 1904 to resemble a wing of the Scottish Balmoral Castle, but it was their son Conrad Stollmeyer and his wife who moved into the miniature castle. They lived there for 30 years, before it was used as a base of operations by the US Military during the second World War. After the war, the Stollmeyer family moved back into Killarney. The Trinidad and Tobago Government bought it over in 1977.
The second picture shows the Nicholas Tower, situated on Independence Square. Built in 2003, almost exactly 100 years after Stollmeyer’s Castle, it is a good representation of the architecture of this generation. Standing at 88 meters high with 21 floors, it is the 5th tallest building in Trinidad and Tobago. Interestingly, the top 20 structures in the country are all found within Port of Spain[2]. The tower also has an elliptical shape, and in the day, its glass walls take on a deep shade of blue. The main uses of the tower are for offices of Airline companies and the Government. On average, it costs $96 000 TTD per month to rent a floor.
There is an evident change of architecture with time, with the respective structures reflecting the cultures of their time periods. Lewis Mumford (1938), in his article “The Culture of Cities”, talks about this: “In the city, time becomes visible: buildings and monuments and public ways, more open than the written record. Through the material fact of preservation, time clashes with time…streaking with different strata of time the characteristics of any single generation”. It is interesting how the two structures are so different to one another in terms of architecture, but yet still occupy space in the same city. One was used as a house and military base in its time, the other as an office building: with the diversity of its time structures, the city in part escapes the tyranny of a single present (Mumford 1938). The materials used in their construction are also very different: whereas Killarney was made of limestone blocks, the Nicholas Tower is made of steel and glass, and yet both are considered respectable architectural feats of their times. Both buildings are also evidence of our efforts to model ourselves like the more developed countries: the castle is a reflection of European medieval culture, and the tower is a modelled off European and North American metropolitan structures.
The structures help to show the multiplicity within Port of Spain itself, and prevent it from being generalized under a single synecdoche. The problem of generalization is the risk of focusing too much on single, isolated spaces, on specific senses of time and on particular representations within cities (Amin and Graham 1997)[3]. The two structures help to show the influence of time on the city, and the diverse range of structures it has created. Nigel Thrift (1996)[4] asserts that 'time is a multiple phenomenon; many times are working themselves out simultaneously in resonant interaction with each other'.
[1] Long, S. "Stollmeyer’s Catle: Long Road Back to Glory." Guardian Newspaper. August 31, 2006. Accessed March 10, 2016. http://legacy.guardian.co.tt/archives/2006-09-05/bussguardian5.html.
[2] "Trinidad and Tobago’s Tallest Buildings." Emporis. Accessed March 10, 2016. http://www.emporis.com/statistics/tallest-buildings/country/100169/trinidad-tobago.
[3] Amin, A., and Graham, S. "The Ordinary City." Trans Inst Br Geog Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 22, no. 4 (1997): 411-29.
[4] Thrift, N. 1996. “Not a straight line but a curve, or, cities are not mirrors of modernity”. Mimeo. Department of Geography, University of Bristol.
