The Tribune

By Diane Phillips

Great buildings are a lot like great people. It’s hard to keep a good one down. They may be fired at, burned, slammed and lambasted. But they rise again and with each assault, they summon the strength to come back bigger, better, stronger.

Count Victoria Court a great building

Fire ripped through her roof a week ago. We watched the videos in shock and disbelief, saw the pages of photos, flames lighting up the night sky. Headlines screaming “Inferno” captured the late-night drama and the chaos and even in 60-pt font, they did not exaggerate. A lesser building would have collapsed but bless her concrete soul and the strength with which she was built more than 70 years ago, Victoria Court, a national treasure that was underappreciated until she nearly lost her life to fire, survived.

Ignored warning

This is not a story about what went wrong with the firefighting debacle nor even when why, when an authority was warned of the danger of the adjacent abandoned building two years ago, nothing was done about it. There will be investigations into why firefighters took so long to respond, why there was only one working fire engine in New Providence, why, when that engine finally arrived, it took so long for firemen to act or, most importantly, why men fighting the fire did not listen to those on the ground showing them where the fire was coming from in the building next door, possibly saving the top portion of Victoria Court to the south.

All the why’s and why not’s are the stuff of regret and fury and, hopefully, to improved training. (We understand that new training initiatives were undertaken within days of the blaze, so good for that response.)

No, this is not about what went wrong. This is about what we can do right, about salvaging and saving and giving a lady of grandeur her due.

She did her job

Twenty-one of the 29 condominiums survived the fire. According to attorney Cheryl Cartwright, who has lived at Victoria Court and loved it for 31 years, “the building did her job. You could walk into any of the apartments on the first three floors and never know anything was wrong. You could pick up where you left off.”

It is a remarkable testament to a building that deserves to be saved, a structure that is as much a part of Nassau’s skyline as the British Colonial, Mt Fitzwilliam, or Parliament and Rawson Squares. We cannot overstate the devastating impact on residents who lost everything they had. Francesco de Cardenas, who lived there for 30 years, escaped with the clothes on his back, a passport and his two dogs, leaving a lifetime of memories, possessions and personal documents behind. He has every right to be angry. “I could have gone back in or spent another ten minutes gathering papers and belongings but I could feel the heat and I got out. Then it was two hours before they even started to fight the fire.”

Building with a soul

DeCardenas and others on the top two floors lost everything tangible that they owned. Historic Nassau could have lost a landmark that can never be replaced. This is not to diminish what residents suffered. I’ve seen their faces, heard their voices, tried to imagine what it would feel like to be in their place. I know one individual who was grateful that someone gave them new underwear and deodorant. Their losses were heart-wrenching, yet even they would say the loss of that building they loved would be the greatest loss of all. The kind of affection they had for that architectural marvel was one-of-a-kind. Owners spoke about Victoria Court as if the building had a soul.

Now they await the results of surveyors’ inspections to see if they can rebuild the top floors and replace the cedar shake shingle roof. They are determined to maintain the integrity of style, possibly using new materials that match the look of the original.

Grant exemptions

As they await the hoped-for go-ahead, here is where government can assist. Grant Customs duties and VAT exemption for building materials and Real Property Tax exemption for a period of 20 years. When Victoria Court was granted a 20-year exemption before, owners invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in restoring the beauty that was sorely tested last week when fire struck.

As long ago as 2002, Alfred Sears, then attorney general and minister of education, delivered the keynote address at the Historic Preservation Workshop. “In recent time,” he said, “my government has publicly recognized the value of and the need for historic preservation…to address the critical delinquency existing in this area.” He noted the inventory of historic properties on the National Register of Historic Resources and when he got to the category of Distinctive Design or Physical Characteristics, the building he cited was the very same, Victoria Court, touting its “distinctive architectural design”.

Even as draw attention to an historic landmark of distinctive and unmatched style and grace, and cross our fingers that the grand dame of downtown Nassau can be salvaged and rebuilt, we have to ask, what are the plans should fire erupt at the British Colonial or along Bay Street proper or elsewhere downtown? Were I a downtown property owner, I’d be asking right now to show me your plan in case of fire. In fact, I’d be asking for a demonstration which, come to think of it, is not a bad idea and could be pretty good pr as well as practice.

Poor Montagu, what are we going to do?

Now that we finally have a view of Montagu Bay thanks to the removal of more than a dozen huge billboards last week, we have this…a growing collection of souvenir stands with shirts and chips, sodas and flags. Montagu Foreshore is a park enjoyed by locals and visitors. The significant word here is park, as in a place for leisure, relaxation, swimming, jogging, walking, working out or simply sitting, enjoying the view. Perhaps the small sign it needs is a directional arrow – Fish Fry four miles that way.