By OSWALD T. BROWN
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Noted Bahamian architect Monte A. Pratt, principal partner in M.A. Pratt & Associates, has made an observation that I hope the powers-that-be would take the necessary steps to follow through on his excellent suggestions.
Commenting on a post by Rosemary Clarice Hanna on the remarkable restoration “of The Weir house on West Street (just south of meeting Street),” Mr. Pratt said it was his understanding that the Government owns some 60-plus derelict buildings, most of which can be restored, and suggested that maybe the Government can accomplish this via The Antiquities, Monuments and Museums Corporation, the “premier keepers of Bahamian heritage and tradition.”
“Hopefully, they can form a ‘Special Bahamian Heritage’ committee that can take a page from the Weir’s book and commence a crucial realistic campaign to SAVE these traditional ‘Bahamian’ homes and buildings in historical downtown and the Over da’ Hill District,” Mr. Pratt writes. “It should NOT be the Cabinet Ministers, Central Bank Officials and Permanent Secretaries deciding on demolishing buildings and/or what the design of what Historical Nassau and the Over da’ Hill District should look like.”
The structural object of Rosemary Hanna’s post is the house on West Street Hill, where the late Gaspar Weir, a successful land surveyor, and the late Eunice Weir, grew up their four children. The Weirs were long-term Methodists who placed a great deal of emphasis on their children receiving a good education. Their oldest child is Rev. Dr. Emmett Weir, one of The Bahamas’ well-known theologians; their other son, Dr. Roger L. Weir, has had a distinguished career in the field in medicine, including more than four decades in some capacity at historic Howard University Hospital and its predecessor Freedman’s Hospital in Washington, D.C.; and their daughters Miriam and Sheila have also carved out successful careers in their chosen fields.
Dr. Weir, who was born in the two-story wooden West Street house 1941, was Chairman of Howard Hospital’s Department of Neurology from 1990 to 1995. In 1973 he became an assistant professor of neurology and subsequently an associate professor, which is his current position at the university.
Dr. Weir’s distinguished career was the topic of the first BAHAMIANS IN DIASPORA feature, which I introduced when I was Press, Cultural Affairs and Information Manager at The Bahamas Embassy in Washington, D.C.
In that article, he recalled that the “home atmosphere had some academic qualities that were reinforced by a grand-aunt Lillian Weir, a former librarian, and her brother Charles Weir, who spoke glowingly of his days at Tuskegee Institute.”
During his teenage years, young Roger Weir developed an interest in brain functions and psychiatry and at the age of 18, he left The Bahamas to finish advanced high school and later enter training at London University.
“My medical schooling was at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, one of the oldest hospitals of the English-speaking world,” Dr. Weir recalls. “I did a medical and surgery internship in the United Kingdom and in 1967 began a psychiatry internship at Harlem Hospital in Manhattan, New York. In 1968 I began a three-year neurology residency at Kings County/Downstate hospitals in Brooklyn, New York.”
In her Facebook post on the refurbishment of the home where the Weir siblings were born, Rosemary Hanna says, “Happy to say that my grandparents’ Market Street house (later occupied by my Aunt Lois Wilson and family) is also being repaired. I pray that this trend to revitalize Over-The-Hill will continue.”
Following up on that comment, Monte Pratt suggested to Rosemary, who is an avid photographer: “Just the other day I was driving on Meeting Street, and I noticed a ‘pink and white’ stucco house — I think it is the last house, or second to the last, before you get to Nassau Street — on the south side, just across from the Ministry of Health parking lot. It appears nobody is living there but it is properly fenced in. You probably know the house and the owners. If you get to go by, take a picture because this house must be restored. It is a beautiful house!”
I hope that those who are in the position to “make things happen” to restore this building and others like it, especially Over-the-Hill, make a commitment to follow through on what Monte Pratt is suggesting. There could not possibly be a better time than now to make such a commitment, considering Prime Minister the Hon. Dr. Hubert Minnis’s “designation of the Over-the-Hill community as an empowerment zone” aimed the revitalization of this impoverished, high-crime area.
