Neil Richards |Preserve Tom Redcam Avenue as education and culture zone

It was appropriate that Jamaica’s first poet laureate who adopted the name Tom Redcam was honoured by the use of that name to identify a road where buildings alongside it would be used for general education and various categories of ‘the arts’.

Within the precinct where Tom Redcam Avenue is situated, the creative literature of the celebrated poet whose ‘trade-name’ was Tom Redcam, is translated in different ways in the curricula of a teacher’s college and a preparatory school. There is also poetry of a different sort in the dance and music at a performance arts college, and poetry is stored on the shelves of a public library.

Tom Redcam Avenue was named in honour of Thomas Henry MacDermot who was born in the parish of Clarendon, and excelled as a poet during the late 19th and early 20th century.

The gently curved Tom Redcam Avenue came ‘to be’ when the ideal solution to the need to divert a substantial number of vehicular traffic from the centre of Cross Roads, was to create a route for that purpose through British crown lands at Up Park Camp.

An army sentry-box that was located opposite the T-junction at Oxford Road and Old Hope Road during the early 1940s (when World War II raged) was later removed to facilitate the ‘opening-up’ of the road that would be named Tom Redcam Avenue.

TIMELY

It was timely that land bordering the future Tom Redcam Avenue would become available to accommodate educational and performance-arts activities, which would satisfy the need for such facilities, because of the rapid northward urban expansion in St Andrew.

Even before Tom Redcam Avenue became a reality, the Anglican Diocese and the Catholic Archdiocese were already owners of large portions of land bordered by Caledonia Avenue, Old Hope Road and the lands of Up Park Camp to the east. Lands owned by the two churches were already in use (or intended to be used) for compatible institutional purposes.

The campus of St Joseph’s Teachers College with its entrance at 16 Old Hope Road, is a Catholic-affiliated institution, often described as “an oasis in the middle of Cross Roads”. Anglican-affiliated institutions that are neighbours of the headquarters of the Anglican Diocese of Jamaica at 2 Caledonia Avenue are Nuttall Memorial Hospital and St Hugh’s Preparatory School.

KINGSTON AND ST ANDREW PARISH LIBRARY

Construction of Tom Redcam Avenue made it possible to build the Kingston & St Andrew Parish Library at its present location where there is good potential to add space to accommodate compatible uses. A very desirable neighbour of the public library is The Little Theatre which was constructed in 1961 and has been a convenient venue for presentation of dramatic (stage) productions, including annual pantomimes and performances of the National Dance Theatre Company (NDTC). The Little Theatre has been a good alternative to the venerated Ward Theatre which has had protracted maintenance deficiencies. Endowment to ‘The Arts’ should deservingly be disbursed in support of the creative output and proper upkeep of the physical accommodation of The Little Theatre.

The northern corner of Tom Redcam Avenue and Arthur Wint Drive was an ideal selection as the site for the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts. It was during the late 1990s that noted architectural firm Design Collaborative won a competition to design an environment of academic spaces and studios highly suitable for training students in the various programmes that would be offered by the college.

Tom Redcam Avenue is within a generally well-maintained precinct with compatible land uses (and building-uses) without the clutter of uncontrolled street-trading. There ought to be proactive efforts to preserve its prevailing character, by ensuring adherence to strict land-use and environmental guidelines, which would serve to maintain and hopefully improve the original intention and expectation that Tom Redcam Avenue would be an exclusive zone for the pursuit of education and ‘the arts’.

Neil Richards is an architect and town planner. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com