The Red House (Trinidad and Tobago) - "The First Red"

"The First Red"

On the 15th February 1844, then Governor of Trinidad, Sir Henry McLeod, laid the foundation stone for a new government administration building on the western edge of the Woodford Square, then known as Brunswick Square. This building was to be constructed on eight privately owned parcels of land. The then Superintendent of Public Works, Mr. Richard Bridgens designed the building and it was constructed by contractors, Messrs G. de la Sauvagere and A. A. Pierre.

The building was to comprise of a north and south blocks and connected by a double archway, much as the Red House of today. The double archway was a necessary architectural feature required by the City Council to keep patent Prince Street, as the buildings were constructed over this street. The Council stipulated that Prince Street should never be closed to the public and, pedestrian and wheeled traffic showed pass freely. The southern block completed in 1848 contained the courts of law and the northern to colonial administration offices.

The buildings were slow to complete and, by 1892, they still were unfinished, as indicated by a quote within the newspaper, the Port-of-Spain Gazette:

"Nothing further had been done to complete the buildings since their errection some fifty years ago. The only attempt to relieve the monotony of the whole is to be seen in the arching of the carriageway through the courtyard which is a perfect skeleton and, like the ruins of Pompeii, is more suggestive of what the buildings must have been than of what they were intended to be."

After many aterations and additions the buildings were completed at a cost of £ 15,000.