50 YEARS CEDAR
ASSUMPTION RC CHURCH - MARAVAL
By Lisa Allen-Agostini
Trinidad Guardian
Features
February 13, 2002
Page 1
There was a note of pride in his voice when Anthony Clyde Lewis architect, looked at the work he did in 1952 for the Assumption RC Church in Maraval.
"Fifty years. Cedar," he said, with a gesture at the rows of clean brown pews in the stately church.
"Perfect condition."
Lewis designed the pews - and the pink, ochre and blue limestone building in which they reside on Long Circular Road - when he was just 33.
On January 20, at the church's 50th anniversary celebrations, he received a special Apostolic Blessing from the Pope for a job well done.
"I was very surprised," said the urban planner, whose firm, Anthony C Lewis Associates, designed the Hall of Justice and the Financial Complex as well.
Which was his favourite design, of all the work he's done in his career?
"I usually say the next one, but I'm getting so old now that I'll say this church," he said, smiling wryly.
"Its simplicity, its materials - local limestone and timber. I had a free hand in the design of it," he said, not mentioning that it was a quid pro quo: he got a free hand in return for doing the work without pay.
The parish of the Church of the Assumption didn't exist before 1952; parishioners in upper St Clair and lower Maraval went mostly to St Patrick's in Newtown.
The Rapsey family donated the site on Long Circular Road and the St Patrick's Building and Finance Committee commissioned Lewis to design a home for a new parish.
Eugene Raymond, chairman of the Assumption Parish Advisory Committee, said it was now one of the wealthiest parishes in the country.
"When it was established there was no Fairways and Ellerslie Park, but now it finds itself in the middle of a very affluent community," he said.
Assumption gives back to the diocese by donating some of the money it raises through its annual Christmas dinner, Easter bonnet parade, family day and other functions, said parish priest Fr Knolly Knox.
"We help a lot of the poorer parishes," Knox said.
"A family day brings in $10,000," Raymond said, adding that Assumption gives between $150,000 and $200,000 on average every year to those parishes.
The money goes through the Chancery in the office of the Archbishop.
Lewis was not the only one honoured at the 50th anniversary celebrations.
Sacristan Brenda Fernandes also got a papal blessing for her 25 years of service to the church.
Raymond explained that the blessing is "one of the highest honours a lay Catholic could aspire to."
The parish flew Fr Cornelius Roche in from Ireland to receive a citation scroll. Roche was the first parish priest at Assumption.
Cited, too, for their service to the church were Knox and Fr Reginald Hezekiah, the two other surviving Assumption priests.
But back in 1952, the St Patrick's Church Building and Finance Committee wasn't so well-heeled. The committee wrote to Lewis asking for "a simple sketch ... a galvanised shed building would be adequate."
Instead, Lewis, inspired by the pink poui tree that still stands in the churchyard, created a delicately beautiful structure with an unusual, serrated design.
It's a design the architect calls "a classic example of ecclesiastic and contemporary architecture", but one the parishioners didn't warm to initially.
"The poor parish priest became the butt of constant criticism from a host of parishioners who repeatedly forecast that on completion, the building would more resemble an aeroplane hangar than a church," reads the church's anniversary brochure.
The saw-toothed walls of the church, Lewis said, let in light without glare: the windows are set at oblique angles to the worshippers. Light streams over the shoulders of the congregation from tall, wide windows and the vertical and horizontal louvres that form the northern wall.
Seen from the back of the church or the now seldom-used choir loft, the church walls and limestone altar look like an enormous, tricolour mosaic.
The blue neon Virgin that shone over the front of the church at night in recent years has been removed.
Greenheart logs form columns outside the church door, but these, Lewis said, have fallen victim to dry rot or insects. They used to reach the ground, but now they are bolstered by concrete.
"Greenheart is supposed to live forever, but it failed me," he said, a little sadly.
His hands shook a little when he flipped the pages of an immense scrapbook in which he stores clippings about his career, but other than that, Lewis seemed pretty fit for someone who will turn 84 in March.
Still, he seemed aware that time is passing, perhaps more quickly for him now than ever. Take for instance the line of trees that used to stand on the western edge of the churchyard. They are gone now, mostly cut down to make way for a wall.
"I hope in another 50 years trees will be there," Lewis said.
"I won't be there to see them grow, but I could see them planted."