May 14, 2008 — If you haven't been through Savan, and been through it slowly, you have missed out on some of St. Thomas' most exquisite architectural heritage.
Displaying the neighborhood as St. Thomas' gem of architectural history, advocates for its restoration and members of the Enterprise Zone Commission (EZ) of the Economic Development Authority showed a group around Wednesday. The group included stakeholders, dignitaries and media on a walk through the down-at-its-heels but still beautiful old neighborhood.
Local Historian Felipe Ayala led the tour, pointing out well-maintained and restored homes, as well as many good candidates for restoration. Some properties are regrettably beyond restoration, but these are in the minority.
"You can have all the functions of a modern building within a historic envelope," Ayala said, pointing out a traditionally painted café as a good example.
To encourage people to fix up their homes and help homeowners underwrite the cost of restoration in the historic neighborhood, the EZ has requested funds from several sources and will look for other sources of money. The EZ has asked for $150,000 from the Reshape Our Streetscape program and $300,000 from the Scrape, Paint and Rejuvenate program.
"Overall the program has asked for a total of $900,000 so far," said EZ Commission Director Nadine Marchena Kean.
Ayala pointed out several homes that had benefited from the funding.
"You cannot do this with small sums of money," Ayala said.
Savan has its own vernacular style. A few traditional-style houses are larger and built of stone or brick, but most are one- or two-story wooden beam and lapboard, or shingled siding with hipped roofs. The real gems are well-built lapboard and beam construction, as well as brick and rubble, typically covered with plaster.
Savan has some traditional "green" or ecologically friendly attributes as part of its character. Savan's typical houses were designed for tropical living, and the town's streets and frigangs — as Savan's narrow alleyways are called — were laid out to take the greatest advantage of trade winds.
Although there is only one left, Savan's houses typically made use of double ovens. Shared by two houses, the ovens were separate from the houses, and generally in the backyard, cutting down on heat in the home and reducing fire risk.
Adding to its "green" traditions, Savan used to have lots of big mahogany trees. Now there are fewer mahoganies, but some fruit trees offer shade.
The tour paused under a striking beauty of a mahogany tree, and Ayala's description of how effectively the tree conditioned the air underneath it was not necessary.
While some modern structures built with stucco and cement interrupt the cottage-scape, the majority of the houses are in the vernacular architecture.
The old guts are still in use. Savan's traditional guts are V-shaped, and the stoops to the houses' front doors usually rise over them like little Venetian bridges.
Taking a rest from the heat and sitting down on one such stoop, tour member Eleanor Jackson Thomas recalled that though she hadn't been there since 1959, she had sat on this very stoop many times.
"This was my aunt's house," Jackson Thomas said.
Pointing out the stair streets, Ayala explained that Charlotte Amalie practically has the corner on the old-stair street market — it has 44, more than any other Caribbean island.
He pointed out the vegetation growing over one such stair street, and recalled that growing up next to a stair-street, it was a matter of pride to keep the part in front of one's house free of trash and weeds.
"We can't expect the government to do everything," Ayala said. "We have to meet them halfway."
Several of the Savaneros on the tour recalled Savan's sense of community fostered by the house's closeness — and possibly the constantly open windows. In Savan everybody knew everybody and everybody knew everybody's business, they said.
As a kid, if you did something to get in trouble, someone had told your mother about it before you got home, recalled Sabanero Kelvin Vanterpool, who now serves as chief of staff for Sen. Basil Ottley's office.
To find out more about architectural restoration in Savan, contact the Enterprise Zone Commission at 340-774-8104 or visit its website.
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