Patricia Green | Devon House and destruction of Jamaican cultural landscape

“… A child says he hasn’t anything on. ‘But he hasn’t got anything on!’ the whole town cried out at last. The Emperor shivered, for he suspected they were right. But he thought, ‘This procession has got to go on.’ So he walked more proudly than ever as his noblemen held high the train that wasn’t there at all ... .” satirised Hans Christian Andersen in 1837.

As we close 2022, it seems that development has taken on the poignant persona of this emperor and hereafter is capitalised. Viewing physically and virtually, development strutting across Devon House in its new clothes solicited various loud cries: Andrew Bellamy endorsed; environmentalist Diana McCaulay bemoaned: “venue-isation;” Deborah Hickling-Gordon blogged “entertainmentisation”; @JulieMango in a December 23 video said: “Devon House pics won’t be the same after these renovations”.

Devon House (ca.1881), a mansion erected by African-Jamaican millionaires George and Magdalen Stiebel after 1838 full-free Emancipation is now a veritable Jamaican palace admired and used widely by people who proudly showcase it to overseas visitors. The 14th-century Alcazar Palace and gardens in Seville, Spain, receive nearly 1.8 million visitors annually. However, for conservation reasons, only 750 people are allowed inside the palace complex at any given time, with the number reduced to only 250 per hour in 2021. Windsor Castle, home to the British royal family for over 1,000 years, averages 10,000 visitors daily, and its gardens are open on the weekend. In the United States, Mount Vernon (ca. 1734), house and gardens of President George and Martha Washington, averages one million visitors per year. In all these cases, across the world, historic gardens on display retain their gravel and/or brick pathways linking out-buildings, kitchen gardens, and green spaces associated with historic integrity.

UNPRECEDENTED

As a student in Seville, I was able to use my resident card to access, free of cost and avoiding long lines, the Alcazar and gardens. What justifies Devon House being closed to Jamaicans except those able to afford entrance fees and especially being open to school tours? What consideration is there to open the mansion periodically, free to Jamaican citizens while respecting carrying capacity like at the Alcazar in Spain? Why should development dictated by external tourism numbers necessitate the radical demolition and intrusion of the interior courtyard and gardens in complete defiance of their historic integrity and authenticity of the historic mansion? This is unprecedented for stewards of heritage properties globally.

After becoming vacant for almost 20 years, Devon House was acquired for the people of Jamaica in 1967 and placed under the stewardship of the Jamaica National Heritage Trust (JNHT). It was rescued from demolition for a multifamily residential condominium development. Edward Seaga, in the foreword of Devon House Families, by Enid Shields, shared that one of the partners in the developer group said “... you people down there don’t want development ...” to which Seaga replied “... yes, but our style, not yours ... “.

Architect Tom Concannon from the offices of the Government Town Planner was assigned the Devon House restoration in 1967 and described it as a striking piece of domestic architecture in the classical style on a scale larger than comparable buildings on the island. He postulated that Stiebel, not being an architect, was incapable of making its sketches or drawings and may have seen a similar house in his travels. Shields records, “.. .after a lapse of over one hundred years, there is no way to tell whether Tom was right or that George did make the design independently ...”.

JAMAICA CREOLE ARCHITECTURE

I present that Devon House epitomises the epoch of the Jamaica Creole architecture in its heyday, an intimate mixture of African design and construction that incorporated European elements. This design remains outstanding with local Vernacular Architecture inclusion of Jamaican craftsmanship. It remains unrivalled globally then and even today, where its attenuated two-storey mansion is intimately connected to its associated environment. Devon House resonated the epitome of the best of architecture surviving from the post-emancipation period dominating the Jamaican cultural landscape. An architecture of large openings and shutters affording natural ventilation, with a timber-framed structure providing hurricane and earthquake resilience that survived the 1907 earthquake. Against this prescience, how do we explain the profusion of multifamily dwellings on Barbican Road and other areas having tiny plate-glass windows in defiance of Jamaica’s environmental cultural landscape and building norms as development marches across neighbourhoods?

Hence, the tweet by @Kree-dat-naw-play on December 22 - “... the laws we have that protect historical buildings should be updated to include the [that] of protecting the surrounding landscape ...” - underscores the responsibility of the JNHT. Devon House, as with all other mansions of its period, would have been influenced by the 1841, A.J. Downing A Treatise On The Theory And Practice Of Landscape Gardening, Adapted To North America With A View To The Improvement Of Country Residences, which outlined that the grounds should be layed out to ensure “... agricultural and gardening comforts ...” completed with farm-yard, flower-garden, kitchen-garden and orchard. Important to the villa or mansion, adds Downing, and partly visible and partly concealed by trees and foliage, are the “... domestic offices, which include the kitchen and its appurtenances, and also the stable, coach-house, harness-room, etc ...”. These are mainly attached to the main body of the building on one side, always making them easily accessible and sheltered, to extend from the main building and should “.. .unite happily with the building ...”.

In the 1960s, public works architect Raymond McIntyre and 1970s JNHT architect Sarah Ann Hodges worked alongside Concannon. I was the 1980s public works architect. They recall that the Devon House ‘domestic offices’ had a covered row of out-buildings from the rear of the mansion that attached the kitchen with its brick oven. Allso behind this kitchen were the pit latrines, which were converted into modern toilets in continuous use today. The stable/coach house [Grog Shoppe extension] existed opposite. As a part of the adaptive use of the property between 1967 and the ‘70s, these architects followed some old foundations, measured and recorded the existing structures to replicate additional out-buildings, then enclosed the area to create a courtyard. They also reinstated pathways that respected the historic environment with covered walkways amid a green environment.

In the 1952 film Hans Christian Andersen, Danny Kaye sang about this emperor in ‘The King’s New Clothes’, with the chorus “... the King is in the altogether ... as naked as the day that he was born ...”. This poignant cry echoed from Devon House following a parade across the Cockpit Country, agricultural lands, beaches, rivers, highways, and residential neighbourhoods. In 2023, development must be clothed as sustainable, intrinsically, with its global criterion meaning community versus an ongoing procession disregarding inclusion of things Jamaican and all Jamaican citizens.

Patricia Green, PhD, is an UNESCO international expert consultant on cultural heritage and member of the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) in its International Scientific Committee on Cultural Landscapes and a co-convener of its Historic Urban Landscape working group. Send feedback to patgreen2008@gmail.com.