The Theatre Royal after the Great Earthquake of 1907

A hundred years ago Kingston was rising from the ruins of the Great Earthquake of 1907. Col. Wray was now a middle-aged businessman himself but wealthier than his uncle could ever have imagined. He was also mindful of where his wealth started and made an offer to the city of Kingston to rebuild the Theatre Royal at his expense. This was a great relief to the Council as one can imagine the public purse would have been thinly stretched with rebuilding numerous public buildings. A competition was held for the design of the new structure and this was won by Mr Rudolph Henriques of Henriques and Sons. Ground was broken and, by the end of 1912, the new Ward Theatre, completed at a cost of 12,000 pounds, was handed over to the Mayor (coincidentally my Great Grandfather) and Council of the City of Kingston. It’s very first production, Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Pirates of Penzance took to the stage from December 19^th to 21^st with tickets costing between 2 and 4 shillings.

This splendid Neo-Classical building was constructed of concrete and steel, the newest method of building after the Great Earthquake. It boasts a stage of more than 2000 square feet and seating for over 800 patrons and was designed to rival the great theatres of Europe but ventilated to suit our tropical climate. The Ward also boasts perfect acoustics and every word spoken and sung on stage carries throughout the theatre without the need for microphones.

A recent photo of the Ward Theatre

My family attended events at the Ward for four generations for, as children, my sister and I were taken to Pantomime every year as well as occasional ballets. I recall watching the very First National Pantomime at the Ward. The theatre attracted international performances from all over the world: Italian opera, Russian ballet and the latest Broadway play. Many events in Jamaica’s history also unfolded there. It was at the Ward that the People’s National Party was launched in 1938 and the Jamaica Labour Party in 1943.

The Ward started its decline in the 1970s, theatre goers went downtown less often and, in a more modern time, there was the major problem of parking. Since 1982 the Ward, once the centre of the arts, has been almost permanently closed. In 1986 the Ward Theatre Foundation was formed and they have been valiantly fighting to raise funds to maintain and refurbish the structure. The Foundation and the Centennial Committee are now trying desperately to raise US$20,000,000 to bring this magnificent old lady back to her former glory in time for her Centennial less than three years away. It would be a wonderful thing indeed if our children could experience a performance on its stage and feel the grandeur that is part of a traditional theatre for the Ward is the only one of its kind in Jamaica and, indeed, the entire English speaking Caribbean.

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Time passes and by 1931 the bridge was old fashioned and unsafe, after all it was not created for motor vehicles! It was closed to traffic on 23rd October 1931, one hundred and thirty years after it first opened.

In 1998 the World Monuments Fund put this almost forgotten bridge on its Watch List and, in conjunction with the JNHT, the Spanish Town Iron Bridge Foundation was formed. People had lost interest in the relic and additional funds were slow in coming. Then Hurricane Ivan in 2004, with its mega-gallons of storm water, almost finished destroying this structure as sections of the two-century old foundation washed away. An all out effort was made and four years later restoration started in earnest.

Work has been underway since October of last year to restore this beautiful piece of our history. The foundation piers are being meticulously restored with hand cut stones and mortar mixed similarly to that used in Georgian times. There’s one difference though: the bridge, which had originally cost ?4000 to fabricate and install, is now costing J$12,000,000 to repair. It will be wonderful to see the finished project which the Jamaica National Heritage Trust and the Spanish Town Iron Bridge Foundation have worked so hard over the last twenty years to accomplish!

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Look at the houses in Cherry Gardens or Mona or Portmore. Concrete blocks sitting on the ground. Locked up from the rain or the heat or the wind. Air conditioners blasting in the Cherry Gardens ones and some of the others too.

Now take a drive through some of the older areas. Vinyard Town is a great example. Look at even older houses like Devon House or Harmony Hall; the Georgian and Queen Anne Victorian styles What do you see? Houses built for our climate not the modern “international style” we started to build in the sixties.

Devon House

So, how do we build a house for our climate? Look to the past. Use “green” air conditioning. Old houses were a marvel of air circulation. Firstly, the house was build off the ground, allowing air to circulate underneath. Quite often this area, or “cellar,” was enclosed with lattice of some sort to prevent animals from getting under the house. The larger homes, great houses or town homes, would have an actual cellar. The poorer homes, like farm-worker cottages, would just rest on blocks of limestone. This feature would also serve to keep the damp out during the rainy season.

The second, and possibly more important element, was the roof vent. This allowed the hot air trapped between the ceiling and the roof a means of escape. Windows were often sash windows with shutters: louvers or jalousies. The jalousies were opened and the windows closed to let in the light or, more often, the jalousies were closed and the windows opened to let in the air. Should a hurricane be imminent windows and jalousies were closed and barred. No time wasted in the days before satellite imagery when the only warning of a hurricane was a bell ringing at the coast when the storm made landfall!

And then, of course there were those wonderful verandahs on two or three sides of the house. Besides being the perfect place to gather, the verandah kept both heat and rain out. If you look at some of the former homes in downtown Kingston or in towns across the island, you will notice than many of these old houses have upstairs verandahs completely enclosed with lattice or jalousies. This allowed the householders privacy to leave all their bedroom windows and doors open in hot weather. In fact, I remember my grandmother telling me that as a child they would actually move their beds out and sleep on the upstairs verandah in very hot weather!

Headquarters House

Many of these old houses also had internal door lights or transoms, small latticed or louvred openings above the internal doors and, on occasion, even interior windows! This didn’t do much for privacy but it certainly allowed air and light to circulate within the house.

I grew up in a house built in the 1940s with a crawlspace, a roof vent, jalousies and internal lattice transoms and I can state quite definitely that it was a great deal cooler than my cousins’ brand new 1960s built on the ground, slab-roofed unventilated house.

So here’s my point. Why don’t we bring back some of those old features. The houses may cost marginally more to build but, in the long run, wouldn’t we have a substantial savings in air conditioning costs? And those of us who can’t afford air conditioning would be a damn sight cooler and more comfortable!

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