Building on the Iron Man site Pt:1

by Oswald A. Fereira 11.MAY.07

In March 2002 I visited the land of my birth, St. Vincent and on my first trip to Kingstown I was shocked beyond belief. I walked down the Back Street hoping to introduce my two young Canadian born children to the “Iron Man”. Remember him, the Unknown Soldier perched high on his pedestal in the beautifully maintained triangular lawn with white fence? He stood like an eternal sentinel guarding all that moved up and down the streets. But lo and behold, he was not there. And I looked across to where the Market Square should be, but instead I saw before me an enormous building.{{more}}

Who would have though that our beloved “Iron Man” could ever be evicted and his piece of scared ground recycled? Who would have thought that the Market Square, the only public town square in all of Kingstown would be built over? I gazed at this new building and all I could say was “it is huge, it’s a MONSTERPIECE!!” Granted, it is a very modern looking building, designed I was told by renowned Italian architects. Even so it is an unfriendly building. From every angle of approach you gaze at almost blank walls. The entrances are not well defined and on the ground floor at least there are very few windows. As you approach this building from north or south along the Middle Street you come up against a mass of wall. The vista down Middle Street across the old Market Square is obliterated and you are left with a feeling of a fortress mentality. We have replaced our only area of public open space with a Vinci version of Fort Knox smack bang in the middle of town!

Let us look at this building in close detail. It is a modern building, unlike any other in Kingstown. Its footprint runs all the way from Bay Street across Middle Street to Back Street. No other building in the Downtown area of Kingstown has a footprint to match. Its long side (from Bay Street to Back Street) is out of proportion to its height. In terms of mass it dwarfs all the buildings around it. There is no interactive space. The building is totally out of context with its surroundings. It looks like a gigantic box. There was no attempt to blend in. Instead it is simply “in your face, here am I,” it dominates the centre of town like a bully. It has changed the historic grid system and replaced it with bulk. This BIG and modern building would look grand on the reclaimed land on the waterfront were scale and blending in with the streetscape surroundings would be less of a concern and where it would have become a real showpiece. In its current location its grandeur is lost, what a pity!

In terms of function this building was built as the home for the vegetable market. However, I saw so many vegetable vendors on the streets all around this building and one can purchase all the vegetables one needs without setting foot in this building. In fact one can purchase vegetables and fish without leaving their vehicle – it is like a drive through market on Bay Street! Something must be wrong here. I dare to say that the closed-in mentality of the building may be partly responsible. Furthermore, despite the historic location of a market, a duplication of a market in such a building at this central location is an inefficient use of what is in effect our historic Town Centre. Now that we have other markets on the reclaimed foreshore, it would seem rather more efficient in having a central market where one could buy fish, meat, vegetables, home produce such as jams and preserves and even arts and crafts all in the same location, there is no need for separate fish, meat and vegetable markets because in the end there the shopper is one and the same. This would have freed up the area occupied by this BIG building for the creation of a new Town Centre.

I am not wont to stand in the face of progress but I am sad when I consider what this BIG building replaced and the opportunity that was squandered to create something grand in the centre of Kingstown. We lost the grandeur of the Iron Man and its surroundings, one of our most familiar historical landmarks. How many times over did we make the deal “meet me at the Iron Man at eleven o’clock?” Yes he is replaced besides this BIG building on Bay Street, but that setting looks like an afterthought and he is right in the traffic. It is just not the same as the almost pastoral setting he previously enjoyed. We lost the open space that he occupied and we lost the vista from the Court House out to the waterfront. We lost the vista up and down the Middle Street and Kingstown now looks and feels disjointed. Now, everything looks so cramped. We lost the beloved Market Square and the history that was written there, the open market on Saturdays that was such a tourist attraction. I hope someone has a copy of those old postcards of the Saturday market, the one we bought many times over at the old Reliance Printery and mailed away to friends. We lost our version of Speakers Corner all those political pundits, the likes of Duncan, Joshua, Cato, and Comrade Charles, who ranted and raved their rhetoric at us over a microphone. Who could forget the strains of Pappy Joshua belting out “Bless be the tides that bind our hearts in human love?” Those men jumbies must be rolling over in their graves when they see their beloved square built over by such enormity.

I would be the first to agree that Kingstown is ripe for urban renewal. However, I would hope that renewal would not simply obliterate our architectural history and replace it with a series of big boxes. Yes, history is important, a city without history is like a person without a memory and as we erase history we create a city that may look new but is like a person with Alzheimer’s disease. While there may be some assumed pride in bringing BIG buildings to Kingstown, there is the associated flipside in that if the BIG buildings are not well designed and well placed they may not be as beautiful and as functional in their setting and in terms of urban design could be deemed “ugly”. We should not forget that SMALL can be beautiful.

In terms of history, let us look at our historic architecture. Kingstown was laid out with wide sidewalks, many with cobblestones that have stood the test of centuries of use. In many places buildings were allowed to build over these sidewalks crating sheltered alcoves with beautiful stone arch works. These were not only form but also function in that they sheltered pedestrians from the elements of weather. I remember that as a schoolboy attending the Grammar School, I was thankful for these stretches of covered sidewalk that helped me to get to and from school in the rainy season. We may have lost some of these however, we must be thankful that the idea was retained in the Singer Building, the Post Office, the old Penny Bank and the newer Jacks store. This is an architectural concept that should be embraced and expanded across Kingstown. It should be made mandatory for any redevelopment projects. We must also consider scale and building footprint. Historically, no building straddled the Middle Street. Having seen the effects of this new BIG building no future building should be allowed to straddle the Middle Street again as it disrupts the vista and necessitates pedestrian detours into the heavy traffic on Back and Bay Streets.

Continued next week….

Oswald Fereira is an Urban Planner living and working in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. He was Manager of the Central Water Authority before he left St. Vincent in 1975.