DYNAMICS OF URBAN ST. GEORGE

About the Book

At the time of writing what is known to have been written about St. George’s, the capital of Grenada, treats mainly of its origin as a French outpost in the Caribbean about 1650, then came the wars of succession between France, England and Spain in the 17 th and 18th centuries, and much later in 1985 when Wilfred Redhead published—“A CITY ON A HILL”, then George Brizan’s Grenada: Fortitude and Human Condition, Beverley Steele’s Grenada: A HISTORY OF ITS People and Raymond Devas’ The History of the Island of Grenada, not forgetting the Grenada Handbook.

It was also mentioned by the Georgian Society of England in the 1930s and again in the 1950s as a charming Georgian town in the Caribbean; and more recently in 2004, “St. George’s-the prettiest little town in the Caribbean” by George Brizan, which was a limited publication for Zublin’s promotional thrust for his proposed St. George’s Renaissance Project, which appears to be out of circulation.

All of the above dealt mainly with its historical, political, social and cultural evolution,but in 1988, at the celebration of the 500th year of the coming of Columbus to the New World, CARIMOS—the cultural arm of the Organisation of American States (OAS), sponsored a technical report by the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Florida to mark the occasion, when St. George’s was described as “a Monument of the wider Caribbean”. A few years later in 1991 the Physical Planning Unit prepared the “St. George’s Development Plan” under the direction of the then Planning Officer—Mr. Carlton Frederick, assisted by a United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Consultant.

The “Dynamics of Urban St. George” seeks therefore to complement the technical deficit—by further looking, examining and analysing the town mainly from a Architectural and Urban Planning perspective, and is therefore a document biased towards technology, which it is hoped will complement the previous publications on its historical and cultural assets, if that is at all subjectively possible while contemplating the synthesis of holistic communities.

There is some confusion, misunderstanding or just mere semantics in the argument as to whether St. George’s is a town or a city; for the purpose of this discourse however, the designation is neither here nor there, what is germaine at this juncture is, that it is a relatively small urban centre with a population of about four thousand, which is rapidly declining, but with unique physical characteristics which influence the dynamics of a small Caribbean Society, within the confines of a limited land space with outstanding and dramatic natural features.

About the Author

Norris Mitchell attended the St. John’s R.C. School, and was the first of two recipients who was awarded the St. John’s District Board Scholarship to the Grenada Boys Secondary School (GBSS), the second was Sir Paul Scoon a few years later. After obtaining his Senior Cambridge Certificate in 1945, he returned to his alma mater, where he taught for 3 years, then the following 3 years in the Public Service. In 1952 he left Grenada for Curacao where he worked as a laboratory technician at the Curacao Petroleum Industries Maskapie (CPIM). In 1956 he migrated to London, England where he read Architecture at the Northern Polytechnic School of Architecture(1956-61), now the University of North London; graduating with an Advanced Diploma in Architecture. In 1961 he was awarded a Post Graduate Bursary from the World Universities Service (WUS) to the University of Rome as the top graduating West Indian student in Art and Architecture, where he obtained a Certificate in Urban Design. In 1963 he became a Chartered Architect after satisfying the Royal Institute of British Architects’ (RIBA) Professional requirements for practicing architecture in England and the British Commonwealth, on completion of two years professional practice with Jackson & Edmonds – Architects and Town Planners of London and Manchester. Professional practice is also a prerequisite for sitting and passing the compulsory State Exam for professional status in the United Kindom. In 1964-66 he worked in the capital city of Kaduna, with the Government of Northern Nigeria as Divisional Architect responsible for project management of all new government buildings. From 1966-70 as Senior Architect at the Ministry of Works- Georgetown, Guyana, and in 1970 established his own practice in Georgetown as NORRIS MITCHELL ASSOCIATES (NMA). Mr. Mitchell was the winner of the national architectural competition in 1971 for the iconic Guyana National Cultural Centre, the largest performing arts theatre in the Commonwealth Caribbean; he has also designed several buildings for the University of Guyana, notably of which is the Faculty of Education Complex. In 1974 he obtained a fellowship from the Commonwealth Foundation London, to pursue a course in Historic Structures Preservation, at the School of Advanced Architectural Studies at the University of York- England and in 1976 another fellowship from the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) to undertake a survey of Research Laboratories in Ottawa, in order to obtain information and data for the design of the Institute of Science and Technology for the Guyana National Research Council. Mr. Mitchell migrated to Canada in 1982 where he became a member of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada (RAIC) and practiced there up to 1987 when he returned to Grenada and re-established his firm: NORRIS MITCHELL ASSOCIATES. Since returning to Grenada Mr. Mitchell has inter alia, been active in the preservation of the Built Heritage and is the founder of the Willie Redhead Foundation, an NGO dedicated to the Preservation and Renewal of the National Heritage of Grenada, and served as its President from 1994 - 2012. Mr. Mitchell is also the author of a “CASE STUDY”, 1979 – of the Guyana National Cultural Centre – reviewed in 2012, and his memoirs, to be published shortly.