Business View Caribbean | October 2020

77 BUSINESS VIEW CARIBBEAN OCTOBER 2020 F IDES L IMI TED German Renaissance, Scottish Baronial, Indian Empire, and Moorish Mediterranean styles— often blended with Caribbean architecture. Most were originally built as residences and kept within families for decades; others were used as official government or church offices. Fides Limited’s first restoration job on one of the Magnificent Seven, under the purview of the Urban Development Corporation of Trinidad and Tobago, began in 2017 on Stollmeyer Castle, originally constructed in 1904, and supposedly styled after a wing of Balmoral Castle in Scotland. Next came Mille Fleurs, also built in 1904, and most recently used by two government ministries. Then there was Whitehall, which was begun in 1904 and completed in 1907. Originally called Rosenweg, the building was renamed Whitehall by one of its former owners because its exterior was built using white limestone blocks from Barbados. Between 1963 and 2009, it was used as the office of the Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago. Restoration on Whitehall has a lot of historical buildings and they are known for their restoration jobs. We engaged the Barbados ambassador to Cuba, who put us in touch with some people who we brought to Trinidad, and they started to help us with the preparation and the execution of our first job - the Heritage Library, which was the first library in Trinidad and Tobago, constructed in 1901. One of the main engineers on the job was Yeimer Suarez. His technical expertise and knowledge are invaluable to the company, and he has been instrumental in of all of our restoration projects, since.” Those projects have included work on four of Trinidad’s “Magnificent Seven,” a group of seven mansions, built between 1902 and 1910, and listed as heritage sites by the National Trust of Trinidad and Tobago, located west of the Queen’s Park Savannah in northern Port of Spain, on land that was previously used as a government stock farm. The structures were designed in an array of architectural styles including French Provincial, Mille Fleurs