THE QUEEN’S PARK HOTEL CIRCA 1950 SHOWING THE FIVE-STORY WING WHICH WAS ERECTED IN 1937 AND FOR A WHILE WAS THE TALLEST BUILDING IN TRINIDAD. SOME MAY RECOGNIZE IT AS THE FAÇADE OF THE BPTT BUILDING WHICH NOW OCCUPIES THE SPOT AND INCORPORATED AT LEAST SOME OF THE ORIGINAL DESIGN Edgar Tripp probably deserved and award for being among the most persistent entreprenurs in local history. Not only was he shrewd in wedding the underaged daughter of a rich planter (wifey kicking the bucket less than a year after the nuptials) but he was also a salesman par excellence. Tripp, before his death in 1921, built a floating dock at Chaguaramas ( a place he believed could be the number one harbour in the world) , sold coal, and was the driving force behind the electrification of POS in 1895. In 1890, he advertized in the POS Gazette that he was forming a consortium to erect a classy hotel near the Queen’s Park Savannah. This was a bold step, since Trinidad was not exactly a tourism hotpoint like Barbados or Jamaica , and all the hotels in the town were located in the business district of Frederick St. and Abercromby St., catering mostly to countryside planters on business and long-term gentleman boarders. The Queen’s Park Hotel was opened in 1895. It was established at the address of 11 Wellington Terrace and was basically the ornate, rambling home of the prominent barrister, the Hon. Frederick Warner. Simultaneously , livery stables with horses and carraiges for guests were established in Newtown, on Woodford St. On opening day on January 16th 1895, the press lauded “The scheme is essentially a local enterprise. Local brains concieved it, local talent planned it, local skill erected it and local capital footed all the bills”. Extensions were made to the old Warner house, and within a year of opening, the QPH boasted 50 rooms on the top floor (30 bedrooms and 20 dressing rooms) , a drawing room and a gallery facing the savannah which was reserved especially for ladies entertaining their peers. The ground floor was also lavish, comprising a lobby, dining room, bar, billiards room and a smoking salon where the gentlemen could partake of the complimentary cigars. The investment was staggering, being the sum of $30,000.00 ( at the time , $600 bought a cottage in Woodbrook) . A Swiss national, who had previously worked at exclusive hotels in the Alps, Mr. Hischly , was hired as manager, since this hotel was advertised as the best in the British West Indies. Intially, the rates were $1.50/night for standard rooms, $2.00 for Continental Rooms, and $3.00 for Deluxe rooms, each accomodation having a private bath, which was a first for hotels in the island. By 1897 the reputation was fairly established since Stark could write thus: “Formerly Trinidad was very badly supplied with hotels, so that travellers hesitated to come here when not actually compelled by business. There has, however, been a great change in this respect. The Queen Park Hotel, opposite the Savanna, built in 1893, is one of the very best hotels in the West Indies. It contains all the modern conveniences ; the situation is delightful and the charge reasonable from $2 to $3 per day.” The opening of the fanciest hotel the island had ever seen had an unusual impact on the social life of the uppercrust. Hitherto, socializing meant an evening at a private home, over cocktails and gossip, spiced by an occasional dance at the Princes’ Building, or for the very fortunate, an invitation to dinner at the Governor’s Mansion (President’s House). In 1912, the following detailed description was penned: “The level savanna at the base of the hills, with its race-course and football fields, is skirted, and the motor shoots through the palm-bordered entrance to the Queens Park Hotel. Here is rest. It is the antithesis to the bustle of the port and the delirium of the drive. An old darky in faded livery, Methuselah, totters out and looks at you. Coolly-clad figures in rocking-chairs on the porch meditatively absorb their drinks without even doing that. After a time, a clerk appears and you sign the register. A while later a black boy comes and lifts your luggage from the motor. After a little longer interval the manager has reached the point of taking you for a long, slow, rambling walk which leads at length to the room that is reserved. It is a huge chamber half as large as a tennis-court. A wicker couch, two big cane arm-chairs, two tables, a gigantic bed and a chest of drawers constitute the furniture. The doors, the window-shades, and the walls for two feet down from the ceiling are lattice-work, open to all the winds that blow. A door in front opens into the garden facing the Savanna. In the courtyard behind, tame white egrets step daintily among the palms and a parrot and toucan screech to each other from adjoining cages. On one side is a row of sheds containing huge bath-tubs. The hotel regime is printed on a noticeboard. Coffee is at seven, breakfast at eleven, tea at four, and dinner at seven. In effect, you are put on a two-meal basis, staving off mid-afternoon pangs with tea and toast. As breakfast is over at twelve, which hour is already rapidly nearing, it seems desirable to indulge now, calling the meal lunch, to justify eating at this time. So you go out on the veranda, which serves as a dining-room. Black waiters dressed in white serve you, with quarter-hour waits between courses, and there are brought the multitudinous dishes of a meal, which begins with hominy and progresses through the stock British stand-bys of bacon andeggs and liver and bacon. Indigenous additions follow : fried plantains and a strangely named fish whose consumption, according to the legend, will bring you back to Trinidad without fail. When fruits are reached you explore a new kingdom, mangoes with their stringy seed ; little bananas three inches long, with a flavour never found in varieties shipped North ; juicy star-apples ; soursaps with prickly green exterior and creamy paste inside ; sapadillas, in appearance brown and like a spherical potato, but inside granular with sugary sweetness. It is a wonderful collection. Why are they not exported in cold storage? $Quidn sabe ? It is a long function, this breakfast. One feels as if he had accomplished an important act when he joins the rest on the rocking-chairs of the portico. None but the heaviest of black Havana cigars seem appropriate, or at least none are procurable. You idly watch a company of negroes with a couple of energetic Englishmen at cricket practice on the Savanna.” The QPH soon became THE venue for high class entertainment. The dances on Thursday and Saturday nights were proverbial and entrance fee was $1.20 per head. The 1930s saw an in-house band, Roy Rollocks and his Orchestra, providing all the latest music . The Old Year’s Ball was the premiere social event of the year, and many rich families began to have debutante balls for their daughters . Dances in this era were the foxtrot and waltz. Young ladies, up to the 1930s, were expected to be chaperoned , bearing dance cards (carnets de bal) tied to their wrists by a dainty silken cord. A dance card was issued in advance of every soiree and listed all the various tunes and dances of the event. On the evening, young men would approach the lady and with her permission, pencil in their names in an empty line next to a dance number which meant that her hand was his for that short interval. A couple who shared more than two dances were considered to be lewd and improper. At midnight , a late supper would be served, with parties of friends gathering around a bowl of sauterne or bottle of champagne. Many of these dance cards were preserved long after these belles of the 1920s and 1930s became old women, as fond mementos of their youth and desirablility. The hotel hosted many dignitaries, and in 1935 included among its guests, H.R.H The Duke of Kent and his new bride Princess Marina who were on a honeymoon tour of Trinidad. The main building, the original home of the Warners, was demolished in 1937 and replaced by a five-story block which was considered a triumph of architecture, being then the tallest building in the island….a veritable skyscraper by local standards. Pan American Airways had been operating a seaplane passenger and mail service from a dock at Cocorite since 1929. In 1939 they added a new wing to the hotel to accommodate their pilots and crew.. The PanAm wing was demolished in the 1960s, along with the remaining portion of the old Warner house to make way for a swimming pool. In 1955 ownership of the hotel passed to J.B Fernandes who also owned the Trinidad Country Club in Maraval. This era was a ritzy period in the history of the hotel, as many Hollywood icons stayed here. When Rita Hayworth and Glenn Ford were filming “Affair in Trinidad” in 1952, this was their base, as it was too for Rita , Robert Mitchum and Jack Lemmon during the shoot for “Fire Down Below” in 1957. Clark Gable also stayed here in 1948 and wowed legions of femal fans, even posing with them for a few photos. A less successful visit was that of the main man of the silver-screen, the dashing Rock Hudson. During the height of his career in the 1950s, Rock was bigger than Brad Pitt and Jude Law combined……the penultimate ladykiller. What his publicists kept from view however, is that the handsome charmer was gay ... Hollywood moguls even arranged a sham marriage to starlet Mamie Van Doren to preserve Rock’s image, a cover they successfully purveyed until the 1980s, when Rock was diagnosed with HIV and came out shortly before his death in 1989. When he visited Trinidad in the 1950s as an MGM promo stunt, he was given the finest suite in the QPH, while outside the hotel, screaming fans chanted his name. There was only one problem . While the papers carried that Rock was staying at the QPH, MGM spin doctors had arranged a secret escapade for their golden boy in a still undisclosed beach house location ‘down the islands. The domination of the QPH as the finest hotel in the island was ended with the construction of the Trinidad Hilton in the 1960s, and the later coming of the Holiday Inn (now Crowne Plaza) with its innovative revolving restaurant. In the 1990s, the building became the headquarters for BPTT, and now its heyday is just a distant, glitzy memory.
Posted on: Sat, 15 Mar 2014 01:06:52 +0000
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