Le Manoir Alexandra

Nathalie Jolivert

A Spatial Narrative in Jacmel, Haïti

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Krik? Krak!1: A Spatial Narrative in Jacmel, HaitiA degree project presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Bach-elors of Architecture in the Department of Architecture of the Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, Rhode IslandBy Nathalie Jolivert2012

Degree Project Advisory Committee:

Anne Tate, Department of ArchitecturePrimary Advisor

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Elizabeth Hermann, Department of Landscape ArchitectureSecondary Advisor

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Jonathan Knowles, Department of ArchitectureThesis Coordinator

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© 2012 Nathalie Jolivert

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To Muriel Jolivert (Père et Fille), Jacqueline Gautier, Fabienne Jolivert, Réginald Jolivert et famille.

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Acknowledgements............................................................................................................................9Glossary of Terms............................................................................................................................10Abstract..............................................................................................................................................13Introduction: Spatial Narratives.....................................................................................................14Field Trip to Oath of the Ancestors.............................................................................................22Appendix A: From Port-au-Prince to Jacmel: November 29, 2011.........................................42Bibliography.......................................................................................................................................44

Contents

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For all their support, guidance and patience throughout this project, I would like to thank dearly: My family, Jennifer Liese, Daniel Harkett, Jonathan Highfield, Andreas Nicholas, Barrymore Bogues, Sarah Ganz Blythe, Sarah Spencer, Michelet Divers, Ciné Institute, École Atelier de Jacmel.

Acknowledgements

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Architectural Preservation: The architectural proposal in this book aims at preserving architectural characteristics not merely as an act of nostalgia but as a trigger for interpretation and dialogues in the future. New architectural proposals are made while preserving old structures, or their formal ges-tures, as reflected in the memory of Jacmelians.

Spatial Narratives:Movement through space, stories, culture and history.

Storytelling: In Haiti, storytelling is a powerful way for people to share ideas, communicate news and transfer history from generation to generation. Usually a storyteller yells out “Krik!” To which the audience must respond “Krak!” for the stories begin.

Carnaval The Haitian Carnaval is one of the most popular festivities celebrated every year the week-end before Ash Wednesday. Jacmel’s carnaval is distinguished from celebrations elsewhere in Haiti with its elaborate costumes, dance troops and colorful paper mâché masks. This event is art and history in movement on the streets of a tightly knit community.

ZombificationZombification happens when a person absorbs a potion that puts them in a very deep sleep. The victim of this potion must eat salt to wake up but risks losing all memory. This is why zombies always look blank-faced when exaggerated for the purpose of Hollywood interpre-tations.*

Kote yo fè zafè yo (“Where they do their things”)During a visit to Jacmel on November 2011, I was given a tour by the caretaker of the Man-oir Alexandra. Upon arriving in the basement of the Manoir, which houses a dark wine cellar with empty wine bottles dating from the 1940s, the caretaker told me he was convinced that the past owners of the Manoir, an influential French family, used to practice Vaudou in this dark space. ‘Sa se kote yo fè zafè yo”—That is where they did their things—he said matter of factly. This belief that a French family would practice vaudou in the underbelly of their mansion has been instrumental in the forming of this thesis: it represents the act of hiding and suppressing a culture.

Glossary of Terms

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Cultural OwnershipThe Louvre Museum exhibited Oath of the Ancestors (1822), a painting by French artist Guillaume Guillon Lethière, to honor the Haitian revolution but without a public announce-ment that it would no longer work with students from the preservation school of Haiti in its restoration. This triggered my interest in proposing an architectural project that would re-claim the piece of art while framing it in a space that will stimulate reflection about the paint-ing’s mobility through space and time. The display will underscore the painting’s charged meaning for a country which has not been able to speak for itself or assert its power to claim its own culture for a very long time.

Cultural Exchange: People usually visit Haiti on service trips. They approach the country in an attitude that read-ily locates them in a position of power. The cultural exchange is thus unequal. In this project, the goal is to foster a mutually beneficial cultural exchange, one in which the lack of knowl-edge in both parties is simply understood as a result of lack of exposure on each side and thus welcomed as an opportunity to learn in a vivid human interaction.

Civic Responsibility Like many countries in the developing world, Haiti suffers from a lack of civic responsibil-ity due to both the fear of being trapped in a corrupt political circle and the terrible brain drain of young intellectuals departing to developed countries. This thesis fulfills a civic duty by tackling a project that communicates a sense of national pride while acknowledging the undeniable need to stay connected with the international community.

Cultural Tourism: While Haiti escaped from the 1950s movement in which most Caribbean countries took on a tourism industry with large insular resorts (thanks for once to its unstable political situation), it now has the opportunity to engage in this industry with a better sense of responsibility and affinity—to welcome foreigners while serving the local community for its basic livelihood needs, and beyond.

*On April 14, 2012 Haitilibre.com an online newspaper publishes the story of a young girl who has woken up in the morgues of Jacmel. Seven days after she’s been proclaimed dead, she woke up in the morgues of Jacmel and ran back to her family. http://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-5401-haiti-social-christella-back-to-life-7-days-after-her-death.html

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Jacmel, the “cultural capital of Haiti,” is a small town located on the country’s southeastern coast. Established in 1698 by France, it is renowned for its tropically infused European ar-chitecture, its welcoming people, its artist community and its vibrant carnival season. Jacmel’s historic district was damaged by the earthquake of January 2010 and made the 2012 World Monument Heritage Watch List. Today, Jacmel presents rich potential as a prototype for both architectural and cultural preservation.

The Manoir Alexandra, an early twentieth-century brick building located in Jacmel’s historic district, is a powerful symbol of Haiti’s cultural identity. Made famous by the novel Hadriana in All My Dreams, by the Jacmelian author René Dépestre, the Manoir represents Haiti’s spa-tial and cultural narrative and the complexities that surround cultural ownership of Haitian identity. These complexities are literally present in the changes that the Manoir has under-gone since its construction in the early 1900s. While its initial use as a private residence for a French family demarcated class and privilege, by the 1980s it became a threshold between the local and international community as a hotel.

This architectural thesis seeks to foster a beneficial cultural exchange within the city of Jacmel and with the global community by transforming the Manoir Alexandra into a house museum that poses questions about cultural assimilation and provides exhibition and per-formance spaces. The house museum itself is dedicated to the exhibition of Oath of the Ancestors (1822), a historic painting that reveals a narrative of European dominance in conflict with Afro-Caribbean heritage. Visitors’ movement through the house museum into its gardens follows a spiral pattern reminiscent of an iron spiral staircase, a common archi-tectural characteristic in Jacmel that is in fact imported from Europe. The spiraling pathway ends in the Manoir’s garden, where Jacmel’s dance academy studios are nestled in dense veg-etation in an atmosphere recalling forest dance rituals during colonial times. Throughout this architectural thesis and this accompanying text, complex narratives from past and present are stitched together, acknowledging a history that deals precisely with the cultural clash that may occur when those two worlds collide.

Abstract

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“When architects speak about a building they often describe it as narrative invoking a viewer and a journey through space. Thus, while design is portrayed as an activity of the mind, a building is seen as something to be experienced. This experi-ence follows a route and unfolds in time”— Sophia Psarra

Space is experienced through memoryI can find my way to the bathroom in the dark: I make sure to slow down before taking a right and bring my hands in front of me, in case the chairs in the kitchen had not been pushed towards the table.

Space is experienced through cultureMy roommate shared a belief that plants are very sensitive to negative vibes. One day of ten-sion between us, deep sorrow dawned over me at the thought of an imaginary plant dying, despite the bright daylight coming through the kitchen window.

Space is experienced through stories I learned that the girl who lived here before me swept all the dust and hid it under the futon when she cleaned the apartment. I am now convinced that I will start sneezing if I go look-ing for something under that piece of furniture.

Introduction: Spatial Narratives

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Storytelling in Haiti is a living tradition in which people come together for creative expression in their courtyards or under the thatched roofs of communal choukoun. If someone feels the urge to tell a story, he or she cries out “Krik?” and waits for the audience to respond with the same fervor “Krak!” This call-and-response tradition was inherited from Haitian ancestors responding to drum sounds during dance sessions or commu-nicating by projecting conch shell sounds beyond dense forests. Stories in Haiti have the ability to blur reality and often deal with issues of life and death in ways that can confuse the audience. This tendency stems from colonial times, when African slaves in Haiti had to hide their culture and reli-gious beliefs and thus developed skills to conceal reality by inventing stories, mixing white saints with African gods, and pretending they were abid-ing by the rules of their colonial masters.

The ability to blur the lines between two different worlds has forever since infused Haitian culture. Storytelling allows history to survive from genera-tion to generation, especially given the country’s low literacy rate. In Jacmel, the stories of history are reenacted on the streets during Carnaval, with colorful costumes and paper-mâché masks of past and current prominent figures. Storytelling is also an informal judicial system. Public figures as well as civilians are careful to act properly for fear of becoming the target of a satirical story.

After the earthquake of January 2010, the maga-zine Museum International published a special issue on the preservation of arts and culture as an important catalyst for reconstruction in Haiti. The authors noted, “The atmosphere, shapes and imagination that make up Jacmel have been created by real men and women. Its unique and inimitable fabric is a patchwork of walls, streets, open spaces, memories, meetings, sensations and creations, voices and images stitched together day by day for posterity. This is not tangible heritage but a history of names.”1

Indeed, the people and names occupying the spaces of Jacmel’s historic district leave a mark on the timber frame houses and iron laced balconies. The patchwork of walls, streets and open spaces are indeed holders of memories. Each street has a history that spans some two hundred years.

It is important for architects to remember the complexities of the rich culture of Haiti as they move forward with their work. The preserva-tion of culture and history of Haiti is especially important today because while Haiti has long been dominated by European discourse, its valu-able art pieces and old structures were so badly damaged during the earthquake of 2010. These essential markers of material culture and heritage are at risk of disappearing from Haitian memory or being engulfed by internationally acclaimed art institutions as their own excavated “acquisition.”

This thesis stitches a series of spaces together through stories. The first story that has inspired me to tackle the subject of spatial narratives is Hadriana in All my Dreams, a novel published in 1987 by the Jacmelian author René Dépestre. The book features Hadriana Siloé, a French girl who lives in the Manoir Alexandra and dies the day of her wedding after drinking a glass of lemonade in-fused with zombie potion. Hadriana’s story sym-bolizes the complex relationship Haitians have with France. Haiti, which Joan Dayan memorably calls the “French nation with frizzy hair,” had to sever its ties with France to gain independence during a bloody revolution in the early nineteenth century. It was then crippled by an international embargo, and in desperation for recognition agreed to pay a debt of independence to France.

Hadriana’s story activates this discourse in the Manoir Alexandra and its immediate surround-ings. This mansion, an early twentieth century white-brick building, is situated in the very center of Jacmel’s historic district. On its northern fa-çade, turquoise wooden-framed windows over

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look a barren plaza, while southern iron-cast balconies offer views of a quiet bay. Layers of chipped paint and missing window panes illus-trate a desolation that began with the closing of Jacmel’s commercial port in the 1960s. The city’s economic and architectural decline accelerated when a powerful earthquake hit Haiti in 2010, affecting much of the historic district and adding long cracks to the aging structure of the Manoir. Alexandra looks like an actress whose glory days have been left behind in an era of a now lost coffee industry. Her state of disrepair perpetu-ates the imagery of Hadriana in All My Dreams. Those who know about the fictional resident zombie bride, Hadriana, look for traces of the young French woman in its decaying walls, ma-hogany stairs and spacious rooms. On the inclined balcony, Hadriana combs her hair while looking out towards a lush garden on the Caribbean side. Her story is a threshold into the mystical city of Jacmel.

The current generation of Jacmelians is young and unaware of Hadriana’s story, which not only translates a magical language but also allows an appropriate understanding of the city’s complex social inheritance. In the novel, Hadriana’s disap-pearance coincides with Jacmel’s actual decadence. Yet it also calls for a reunion between the Haitian population and the international community. René Dépestre has been criticized for idolizing his protagonist and her symbolism in a proud eman-cipated black society, yet his novel depicts exactly the complicated relationship between Haiti and the world.

The second influential story, which parallels Hadriana in All my Dreams, is that of a historical painting Oath of the Ancestors (1822). The paint-ing celebrates the union of black and mulatto slaves against Napoleon’s army by staging upfront the Haitian Independence heroes Jean-Jacques Dessalines and Alexandre Pétion. Oath of the Ancestors not only eternalizes the collabora

tion that has defeated the imperialists’ strategy to “divide and conquer” but also symbolizes the complicated relationship between an emanci-pated people and its former authority figure by showing a prominent white figure acknowledging the sacred moment. As a mixed child of a white colonist and black slave from Guadeloupe, Guil-laume Lethière also finds himself in the historical context of his painting.

From the way Oath of Our Ancestors was smug-gled out of France into Haiti’s Catholic cathedral in 1822 to its present restoration in France after it was buried under the rubble of the Haitian Presidential Palace during the earthquake of January 12, 2010, Lethiere’s piece has captured a meaningful moment in history that continuously applies to many aspects of our evolving world of freedom, identity and cultural ownership. It also happens to have been an active artifact during Haiti’s two most major events in history that have triggered incredible international attention: the Revolution of 1804 and the powerful earthquake of 2010. However, from November 2011 to Feb-ruary 2012, the Louvre museum has exhibited the Oath of the Ancestors in its galleries, simultane-ously dismissing long-term plans of collaboration between the French and Haitian government in the restoration of the painting. With the lack of information provided around recent decisions re-garding the painting, the Haitian people, like their ancestors, have been denied agency in determin-ing the fate of their own heritage.

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I have decided to describe my project—a proposal for the revival of Jacmel’s central plaza and addition of a museum and dance academy—through a series of stories that allow me to describe and honor the cultural history and present of Jacmel. This book’s main text is an imagined story of a young schoolgirl from Port-au-Prince who goes on a field trip to see Oath of the Ancestors as it is exhibited in the Manoir Alexandra. Following that, an appen-dix documents my own journal entry from a trip to Jacmel in Fall 2011. All in all, this thesis guides the reader through my own personal discovery of Jacmel. As a Haitian who grew up in Port-au-Prince and traveled to the United States for my studies, I am constantly interested in thresholds, light and shadow, Blackness and Whiteness, revealing and concealing, Haiti and the international community, and in optimizing a rich exchange of culture through my project.

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Krik?

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Krak!

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A visit to the Manoir Alexandra

by Magalie Jolicoeur, a Catholic School Girl from Port-au-Prince Friday, May 12, 2015

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or a field trip with my art history class, we embarked on a journey to the Manoir Alexandra, a house museum located in the historic district of Jacmel on the south-eastern coast of Haiti. The Manoir Alexandra was built in the early twentieth century and belonged to an influ-ential French family called the Vitals. It takes two hours to reach Jacmel from Port-au-Prince, via the Route Nationale Numéro Quatre. The¬ nun principal of my school received a great offer from the public transporta-tion department when she asked for tap-taps to drive us to Jacmel. Venezuela had donated a new fleet of hybrid pickup trucks to Haiti in their effort to rekindle a rela-tionship that had allowed them their independence.

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Jacmel played an important role in Venezuela’s indepen-dence by providing refuge to Simon Bolivar, their libera-tor, who learned battle tactics from the Haitian Revolu-tion leaders. The Venezuelan flag was in fact conceived in Jacmel.

Artists from Carrefour Feuilles have transformed the hy-brid trucks into colorful mobile art pieces by adding metal shade structures to their trunks, which they then painted with various proverbs, portraits and natural scenes. The transportation department was eager to accommodate us when they learned we were going to Jacmel. They saw it as a photo opportunity that would advance their credibility with a private Catholic school, the most respected type of learning institution in Haiti. Although some parents would never let their kids ride a tap-tap in Haiti for fear of ac-cident, they trusted our nuns’ decisions blindly. Thankfully the school hired its own drivers.

We have just finished studying the history of Oath of the Ancestors (1822), the only painting showcased at the Manoir Alexandra. Oath of the Ancestors was exhibited in the Haitian presidential palace, which collapsed during the earthquake of 2010. After its rescue from the ruins of the palace, the paint-ing was sent to France for restoration and exhibited for a short moment in the galleries of the Louvre Museum.

While the national museum of art in Port-au-Prince made plans to expand its facilities by opening museum annexes around the country, Jacmel was the first city to benefit from this initiative. The minister of tourism, a very young energetic lady, has been persistent in advancing plans of restoration and tourism rehabilitation in Jacmel and succeeded in persuading the government to provide the city with the first new museum annex at the Manoir Alexandra. Oath of the Ancestors will be showcased at the Manoir until the completion of the presiden-tial palace.

Rescue of Oath of the Ancestors

We learned it was a long and arduous battle to figure out how best to exhibit the painting within the Manoir and whether it was appropriate to exhibit a piece with such difficult message in the center of Jacmel’s public plaza. This idea of mediation between France and Haiti generated many heated conversa-tions in our classroom. Our poor nun-teacher, a Haitian lady who respected her French co-workers, felt that she was in a difficult situation. The most nationalistic students were first infuriated that the Louvre Museum did not keep its promise to work with students at the preservation school of Haiti by exhibiting the piece in their galleries. They also questioned if Haiti should pay homage to a foreigner whose interpretation of our independence could be easily mistaken as an admira-tion of Western culture and religion. Perhaps the Jacmelian artist Préfète Duffaut, who challenged ideas of perspective by creating worlds of many dimensions with the use of flat figures, should be honored instead.

Photos from the Haitian French Embassy

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The more we learned about Oath of the Ancestors in relation-ship to the fluid conversations of cultural exchange in Jacmel, the more we saw that the discourse around this painting fits the city of Jacmel. The city has a rich history of openness to the world and was called City of Lights after it became the first Caribbean city to gain electricity in 1925. Furthermore, one of the reasons to exhibit the Oath of the Ancestors in the Manoir Alexandra is to invite viewers to reflect on another story that explores relation-ships between France and Haiti. Hadriana in All My Dreams, is a novel written by René Dépestre (b. 1926), a Jacmelian author. It won the Prix de Renodaut in 1988 and made Le Manoir Alexan-dra famous. The protagonist, Hadriana Siloé, a French girl, lived in the imposing mansion in the 1930s. When she died the day of her wedding, the city of Jacmel became animated with mystical speculations. The Vaudou practitioners in Jacmel were convinced that the promiscuous Granchiré turned butterfly was the cause of her sudden death. In fact, Hadriana had fallen in a deep coma caused by the absorption of the zombie potion, a mixture of herbs, puffer fish extract and other natural substances.

While René Dépestre wrote Hadriana in All My Dreams to reach out to France, the painter of Oath of the Ancestors, Guillaume Guillon Lethière (1760-1832), an influential French painter of mixed ancestry, showed his solidarity to Haiti

Jacmel

Venezuela

Jamaica

Jacmel, France and the world

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by sending his painting to the young nation in 1823. He revealed for the first time his Antillean origins by adding his location of birth to his signature and in doing so jeopardized his status as a teacher in the French Academy of Art.

The French were so angered by the loss of their colony that it was not until after the earthquake of January 2010 that Nicolas Sarkozy became the first French president to travel to Haiti. My friends and I remember listening to the radio when Sarkozy’s res-cue troops to Haiti were led away by the United States Marines as they reached Haiti’s airport. Despite this incident Sarkozy did make it to Port-au-Prince a few months later. Sarkozy visiting Haiti was not the first sign of reconciliation. As a matter of fact, our school is a French congregation that has benefited from a long relationship between both countries.

As soon as we found ourselves holding onto our seats, I knew we were driving through “Route de l’Amitié” or Friendship Road. This twisting road was built by the French in 1977. The nun, who came with us in our tap-tap, explained to us that the French usually built roads in Haiti to respect the landscape. They refused to use dynamite to explode the mountains for straighter access. The construction of Route de l’Amitié, was another sym-bolic sign of reconciliation between the French nation and Haiti.

“Go Hadrina! said a voice on the Caribbean side”

Photo: Oswaldo Salas, D. R.

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As we reached Jacmel, the tap-taps dropped us on Grande Rue and we walked towards the Carnaval stairs. Sandbox trees lined the steps and offered a cooling shade. During our ascent, we passed by one of the Manoir’s entrances in the middle landing of the staircase. We could hear sounds of drumming emanat-ing from the lush garden. Students from the Dance Academy were probably rehearsing for La Belle Siloé, which I have been pressuring my mother to drive us to Jacmel to see. La Belle Siloé is a dramatization of René Dépestre’s novel, set on the grounds of Manoir Alexandra. Thankfully there is a short showing of one act this afternoon.

The nun wanted us to first stop at the Hotel de la Place for quick refreshments so we continued up the stairs. We were slowly emerging back to daylight as we reached the Rue d’Orléans, which creates a break between the Manoir and retaining wall of the Park.

Walking up the last flight of stairs, we could see kids playing on a merry go round, but as we reached the top, the Town Hall, a white building conceived in a Neo-Classical style came into view on our left. Be-hind the set of columns, a group of men in suits were engaged in a lively discussion. As soon as they saw our group in our uniforms they lowered their voices. “Good morning dear Sister,” they said to our nun principal. “And good morning young ladies.”

The kids on the merry go round stepped off in laughter, stumbling in their dizziness. Some of them exaggerated their steps and bumped into us: “Oh padon, padon!” (Oh sorry, sorry)! They kept laughing as they ran towards their parents who were chatting on a nearby bench.

Carnaval Stairs

We crossed Rue de L’Église and reached the Hotel de La Place. The bottom floor of the Hotel is a café. A large mural of the town of Jacmel painted in the naive style borders the right wall of the room. On the North wall there is, a painting of the historic district of Jac-mel by Cecilia Corragio, an Italian architect who was enamored by the city. Her painting imitates the naïve style of Haitian paintings yet with a lighter touch; she couldn’t get the architecture lines out of her creation. Cecilia produced a substantial document on the his-toric district in 2007, which Sister Angelina showed us in preparation for our trip to Jacmel.

The owner of Hotel de la Place started chatting with us from beyond his desk. His face glowed with excite-ment while talking to us. It seemed like business was going very well for him because the café was full. Tourists from all over were in Jacmel to see the newly inaugurated museum and the exhibition of Oath of the Ancestors. “Ti Kote Pam”, a wine bar and café at the basement of the Manoir, was the first space al-lowed to the public after the earthquake.

Hôtel de la Place

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I learned that Ti Kote Pam’ comes from the story of the encounter of the basement space with the caretak-er of the mansion who was convinced that in the base-ment, the Manoir’s occupants used to practice Vaudou. He said: “Sa se kote yo fè zafè yo!” which then the owner transformed into Ti Kote Pam’ (My little Place).

Ti Kote Pam’ had a lot of success as an underground space for the artists of Jacmel, who also started using the garden for pop-up installations and performances. This attracted the international artists with whom they collaborated, and eventually a request for a proposal went out for the conception of a new dance academy in the gardens of the Manoir. The challenge was to respond to the architecture of the Manoir Alexandra and discreetly allow spaces of dance performances in the garden. When the owner of the Hotel saw that I was examin-ing Cecilia’s painting on the wall, he took the oppor-tunity to tell us more about it. “Oh Cecilia, bless her soul. The woman laid down in front of a bulldozer when the government came to tear down our park!”

I had never heard of such radical civic reaction in Haiti. Cecilia’s research on Jacmel’s historic district definitely helped some of the Jacmelians defend their cause when the earthquake of 2010 almost caused the demolition of many historic houses without inspec-tion.

Place Toussaint Louverture

After we all got a glass of lemonade, we crossed the park, which had been replanted with large sand-box trees. When the seeds of those trees ripen, they explode and fall on the ground in many small pieces often times used for jewelry. The old curvilinear plant-ers have been kept as they were and provided seat-ing under the trees. The southern part of the plaza opened up to the facade of Le Manoir with its tur-quoise window frames and monumental old sandbox tree, on the right.

Cecilia Corragio painting in ‘Patrimoine de Jacmel’, 2007

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The rehabilitation of the Manoir consisted of a series of interventions in which materiality was charged with meaning. Before this trip we took a test that dealt pre-cisely with the information on the various architectural aspects of this house. A narrow wooden bridge led us to the door on the right side of the Manoir. The bridge, made of mahogany, was a reminder of the importance of this type of wood during colonial times. Haiti, the former French colony of St. Domingue, had been ravaged in pursuit of that precious material, which was exported to Europe for expensive furniture pieces during the eigh-teenth century. In order to build this bridge, the Manoir Alexandra imported mahogany from Bangladesh, where it is grown sustainably on plantations. The use of the Bangladeshi mahogany was also a way to foster better relations between the two countries, especially since Bangladeshi soldiers have been a major component of the United Nations force in Haiti.

Crossing the bridge, the last thing I noticed was the old metal sign of the Manoir Alexandra with an additional “N” to the “Manoir”, an orthographical mistake that the museum decided to keep.

Mahogany Bridge

Photo: Norma Barbacci from the World Monument Fund

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Once we crossed the bridge, we reached the main entrance to the Manoir. The door opened up to the top floor of the house, where we got our tickets to the exhibition of the Oath of the Ancestors. A moveable wall separates the reception desk from a contemporary piece that had been commissioned to introduce visitors to Lethière’s painting. It consisted of a collaboration between a group of artists from Grande-Rue in Port-au-Prince who call themselves Timoun Rezistans (Kids of Resistance) and students from Ciné Institute, a Jacmelian film school. They worked to-gether to create a video piece merging journalistic photo-graphs of the rescue of Oath of the Ancestors, its exhibi-tion in the Louvre Museum and a collage of their own metal creations and video recordings.

After we passed the moveable wall, we found a grid of earphones dangling from the ceiling. I looked up and could see that they were hanging from a large intricate metal lace of vèvès, symbols of the Vaudou lwas. Although I could easily recognize some of the famous vèves, such as the heart shaped Èzili and Baron Samedi’s cross, I always wished I had more exposure to those beautiful designs. Vèvès are usually drawn on the ground with salt during Vaudou ceremonies. The closest I have experienced scenes of Vaudou is when some music bands, strongly influenced by this religion, would perform in the streets of Port-au-Prince during Carnaval.

We all reached out for the earphones and looked South towards a large screen above which the title of the piece read: Koute m’Souple/ Écoutez-moi Attentivement/ Listen Closely.

Reception Room

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After we finished watching the video piece, we took a left into the main entrance of the Oath of the Ancestors gal-lery. Entering that room, we were forced to walk two by two into a narrow corridor. The wall on the left was very white and did not reach the ceiling, while that on the right exhibited the original color swatches of the old residence. Tall doors perforated the colorful wall and opened up to a large balcony overlooking the bay of Jacmel. Although the view of the bay would normally attract me, I couldn’t help but wonder when the contents of the white box would be revealed to me.

We turned the corner and still no entrance. The windows on the North side of the Manoir looked onto the Central Plaza. Some people were playing dominoes while three kids zoomed by on their bikes, purposely disturbing them by making warrior noises. Beyond this scene, I could see the sign of the Municipal Library. Some students in uni-form were studying for upcoming exams. This reminded me of the amount of work waiting for me after this trip, which was not conveniently placed in our schedule. We were all so excited to go visit the Manoir that we neverthe-less accepted in unanimity.

White Cube

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A mahogany staircase leads from the top floor of the Manoir to the Rue d’Orleans level. However the staircase is not accessible because it has been kept in its rundown state —the only part of the house that would not be completely restored. While the mahogany bridge brought forth the importance of a material that colonial countries valorized, the rundown staircase had to keep the memory of a piece of architecture that cannot be recreated be-cause the mahogany is no longer found in abundance in Haiti. Keeping the structure as it was after the earthquake would also allow the exhibition of the actual piece of architecture that Dépestre mentioned in his novel. Many people who had the opportunity to stay in the Manoir while it still functioned as a hotel would also mention the staircase. There is even the story of a “tonton de bois,” a wooden statue that used to be in front of the staircase. Kids in Jacmel would fear going past that statue because they were told that it could come alive and scold them. Thin black metal rods served as railings between the path and the staircase. The path finally ended with a corner on the left, from which we entered the white box…every-thing turned dark.

I was followed by three of my classmates and one of the nuns into the dark room. At the end of the long, narrow rectangular box, Oath of the Ancestors hung with only one meter of free space on each side. The interior walls of the box were painted a very dark grey.

Mahogany Stairs

Oath of the Ancestors

Measuring the Manoir Alexandra with students from the École Atleier de Jacmel (Jacmel’s Preservation School)

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The prominent figure in the painting, a Judeo-Christian God, came down from above in a divine light. The nun quickly made the sign of the cross and whispered “Amen.” I looked up towards the ceiling. The top border of the box was lined with small dim lights, which en-hanced the effect of God coming down from the top of the painting. The metal Vèvè grid faintly appeared above this visual effect. After looking up for so long, I felt the need to rest my eyes, and looked back down into the darkness. God’s hands came out in a sanctifying gesture above the Haitian generals Jean Jacques Dessalines and Alexandre Pétion, who fought for our independence. The hands of the generals in the foreground, all fingers out, hinted at a feeling of surprise, also reflected on their faces, as they looked up towards the divine light. I felt unbalanced until my eyes rested on their other arms, holding each other in solidarity. Beyond this camaraderie the first few sentences of the declaration of independence are engraved in a stele. I stepped back and leaned against some black thin rods, similar to those blocking off the mahogany stairs. They were conveniently placed along the long walls of the box; I probably stared and analyzed the painting for ten long minutes. When I finally turned around towards the entrance room I realized that on its left, another door led to a void with a green reflection. A visitor went through that mysterious door and I followed him.

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The doorway led to a narrow set of wooden stairs painted in green and white, favorite colors of the Vitals. However, the staircase was for the servants’ use as they worked unobtrusively. They were hidden behind a green cabinet, which had been kept intact between the white cube and reception room’s walls. The stair case turned around once and led me to the rez-de-chaussée, or ground level.

I reached a room bordered by a porous thin metal screen in the same foot print as the white cube from above. Here is René Dépestre’s library. On low wooden benches Dépestre’s books and various other publications on post- colonial literature are exhib-ited for visitors to borrow and read in an adjacent room. Some of my classmates were already skim-ming through the books. I continued my procession outside of the porous box. The mahogany staircase came to view again on the north side of the house. I walked underneath and finally stepped out unto the Rue d’Orléans.

As I walked out on Rue d’Orléans, I heard some people crossing the mahogany bridge above me. The retaining wall of the plaza, terraced into three batches of bougainvillea, offered such a beauti-ful view of plentiful white flowers. The wild child in me felt like jumping into them. I could imagine Hadriana’s wedding bouquet made with these same flowers. However the rehabilitation of this retaining wall happened after Hadriana in All My Dreams was written. How flattering would it have been to have people throwing flowers at you from above as you exit out on Rue d’Orléans, the day of your wedding?

A tour guide on Rue d’Orléans told me to find the staircases on the east side of the Manoir into the gar-dens. Indeed a long set of stairs in bricks paralleled the Manoir’s eastern wall. I stepped down and was immediately submerged in dense vegetation. The staircase ended on the porch of the Manoir’s lower level and entrance to Ti Kote Pam’.

In Ti Kote Pam’, the wine bar, was located at the slightly elevated level of the basement and against the Rue d’Orléans’ retaining wall. It is the space that the caretaker indicated as “Kote yo fè Zafè yo,” which in fact was a small wine cellar. The crowd in Ti Kote Pam’ was quite eclectic. One man had the longest dreadlocks I had ever seen. He held his hair like a baby in one arm while he used his other hand to smoke a pipe. His hands exhibited an incredible amount of bracelets and rings. His interlocutor did not lack style either, yet in a more subtle way, com-bined various colorful patterns in his outfit.I spotted two of my friends in their uniforms. They were the most artistic students in our class. The Manoir repre-sented a potential space of training for them and so they felt the need to solidify their connections within this vibrant artistic community. The basement was separated in two long rectangles east to west, at the same orientation of the Oath of the Ancestors’ white rectangular box. The nuns were not quite comfort-able with us going to Ti Kote Pam’. They had tried to dissuade us by leading us to Hotel de la Place instead for refreshments. Our uniforms alone made us feel obligated to keep our composure as true Catholic ladies… which ultimately meant a display of awkwardness around any type of “sinful plea-sure”. To avoid any oppressive feelings, I walked out to the gardens.

Ti Kote Pa m’ Service Stairs

René Dépestre Reading Room

Rue d’Orléans

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Fresh air…and the smell of coffee: there was such coolness to the gardens that the museum was able to grow coffee closer to a smaller building on its side. Led by the familiar morning smell, I walked towards the building, which offered a large porch with rocking chairs on it. While all visitors were enjoying afternoon cocktails at Ti Kote Pam’, this space was empty. I reached one of the chairs and sat for a little. Looking out to the garden, the tall trees provided an irregular grid of columns, which sud-denly looked like they slanted ever so slowly and dramatically hit the ground. Confused by this visual phenomenon, I stepped out from the porch and took the stairs down one terrace of the garden. A clamor of laughter startled me. As I was captivated by the visual illusion I forgot about the natural roof above me. I looked up and spotted a colorful figure in the tree. A dancer disguised as a butterfly was reaching out for a mango.

The dancers of la Belle Siloé were taking a break from their dance rehearsal. Because they were so agile and graceful, I did not hear them come up to the garden from below. I looked back to my visual illusions and saw more butterflies coming up from below, one by one beyond the column grid. That’s when I realized that they were coming up from their studio spaces. The natural column grid was indeed heavier as it slanted towards the ground. Huge metal angular beams looked like the trees fell and sunk into the ground. I followed one of those beams, which subtly flattened into a reflective wall. Towards the end of this wall, yet another butterfly in black was stretching at a bar.

Curious about where those dancers were coming from, I walked down towards the space from which they emerged. I first looked back to make sure of where I was coming from. The view of the Manoir was quite mesmerizing. I could barely see the third balcony due to the dense vegetation but I could see the first two. One of the tall coconut trees protruding out from the canopy made me want to go up above. Some people were seated on the middle balcony, which poured out from the Dépestre Reading Room. At that point however I was closer to the studio spaces and heard drumming from below.

Mirror, Mirror

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The drums were louder now. I walked towards the handrail and at the level below I had a view of several dancers rehearsing in front of a long dark mirror nailed against a lower retaining wall. The stage also overlooked the French Alliance’s courtyard at a level below and across Rue Seymour Pradel, which separates both venues. An iron spiral staircase was wedged in a corner betwee¬¬n the stage’s handrail and that retaining wall. The dancer who indicated the doorway took those stairs. She saw me looking down and told me: “You should go sit now, we’ll need the stage, the show is about to start.”

I let the sound guide me. I walked towards the mirror and two darker rectangle forms indicated the entryway to the building. One of the dancers was practicing her dance moves nearby. She saw that I was hesitating to go inside. “You can go in,” she said, “That’s where we will be performing in a few minutes.” I walked into the space. Large stairs were oriented south towards a stage, with the bay of Jacmel as a backdrop. The space was empty, but the wooden ground was shaking.

Dance Spaces

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Appendix Jacmel on Sunday, November 20, 2011

This morning, I took the road to Jacmel with my mother and my cousin Catherine. Catherine is a recent college graduate in journalism and I invited her to help me interview people of interest in Jacmel. In preparation for our journey, we discussed the importance of civic responsibility, economic growth and tourism in our native country, but most im-portantly, the role of the preservation culture in Haiti’s redevelopment. I had just finished reading Hadriana in All My Dreams and felt inspired by the artistic possibilities to frame an architectural study of Jacmel through Dépestre’s symbolical novel. Catherine’s paternal side of her family is renowned for their artistic immersion and activism in the literary world of Haiti and thus I felt she would provide the perfect feedback on my research studies.

Engaged in our conversations, we did not pay much attention to the road. This would not have been the case if it were unpaved, like many long-distance roads in Haiti. However, once we found ourselves holding onto our seats for balance, we stopped talking; con-templation took over our words as beautiful green-rippled valleys revealed themselves. The winding road, bordering the red and fertile mountains of the southeast, hugged all the curves and crevasses of the mountains. I knew we were getting closer to Jacmel. This twisting road, “Route de l’Amitié” or Friendship road, was built by the French in 1977. My mother explained to us that the French usually built roads in Haiti to respect the landscape. They refused to use dynamite to explode the mountains for straighter access. The construc-tion of Route de l’Amitié was in fact a symbolic sign of reconciliation between the French nation and Haiti. The two countries have had a difficult relationship since Haiti, formerly known as Saint Domingue, gained its independence from France in 1804.

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Route de l’Amitié was the fruit of the alliance between Jean-Claude, a philosophy Haitian teacher in Jacmel who had studied at the Sorbonne School, and Bernard Bonin, a French scholar who attended the same school and became the French ambassador of Haiti.

After swirling through the Route de l’Amitié, a landscape of scarce house plots and pre-fabricated houses donated by earthquake relief organizations led up¬ to a dense urban fabric. We finally reached Jacmel. A labyrinth of narrow roads bordered with colorful houses, some of them older than the others, came out to the wide central plaza of Jacmel: La Place d’Armes or Place Toussaint Louverture, a plateau above the city. Upon reaching the plaza, it felt like curtains opened up to a stage where all the buildings I had been studying for the past few months were exposed. The Manoir Alexandra, in its beautiful state of decadence, peeked through the knotty leafless branches of a sandbox tree. The Town Hall, a little further right, carried a dangling garland of lights. On the opposite side, the municipal library was tucked away behind a tuft of trees. Some merchants bordered the plaza’s northern side and a few young kids were playing soccer in the barren park.

For lunch, we stopped at the Hotel de la Place, former “Pension Kraft.” Hadriana’s loyal friends, sisters who swore to celibacy due to the sad fate of their beloved French friend, spent the rest of their lives welcoming visitors at this four-story tall building in Jacmel. As I ordered a glass of lemonade, I could not stop but wonder why the woman who served us smiled at us so knowingly. My thoughts had already been haunted by Dépestre’s legend. In Hadriana in All My Dreams Hadriana calls out for a glass of iced water before leaving her house for the Cathedral St. Philippe et St Jacques, on the day of her wedding and sudden death. While two-thirds of the novel explain her death through the narrator’s memory, the last chapter is told in Hadriana’s voice. In a state of coma, she recalls swallowing an entire jug of lemonade and questions if it contained the potion that had triggered her deep sleep.

Waiting for our food, Catherine tried to connect to the internet with her phone but lost the signal. The hotel manager, who sat a few tables away, listening to the radio and latently watching passers-by, told us in a careless way that we would find signal “up there.” Up there? “Well you know, just go up, all the way up; there is a room with an internet box to which you can connect your phone.” I saw the waitress watching us again and jumped on the op-portunity to escape from her puzzling glare. Catherine and I climbed up to the top floor of the Hotel. On the balcony, we had a better view the Place d’Armes and blue bay beyond the Manoir Alexandra. We were as high as the birds and it felt like we could almost communicate with them. The blue of the sky and sea merged and blurred our horizon line. “What a beau-tiful view,” Catherine said as she leaned on the balcony. Her voice had the underlying intona-tion we all know too well in Haiti: “What a beautiful wasted view.” We were the only clients at the restaurant and entire hotel.

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On Le Manoir AlexandraDepestre, René. Hadriana Dans Tous Mes Rêves: Roman. Paris: Gallimard, 1988. Print

On Architecture PreservationScott, Fred. On Altering Architecture. London: Routledge, 2008. Print.

On Space, Meaning, Narratives and CulturePsarra, Sophia. Architecture and Narrative: The Formation of Space and Cultural Meaning. London: Routledge, 2009. Print.Bhabha, Homi K. The Location of Culture. London: Routledge, 1994. Print.Dyer, Richard. White. London: Routledge, 1997. Print.Harkett, Daniel. “Revelation, Narrative, Rupture: Viewing David in Restoration Paris.” In David After David: Essays on the Later Work, edited by Mark Ledbury, 314-325. Williamstown, Mass.: Clark Art Institute in association with Yale University Press, 2007. Fjeld, Per Olaf., and Sverre Fehn. Sverre Fehn: The Thought of Construction. New York: Rizzoli, 1983. Print.Wilson, Fred, and Lisa G. Corrin. Mining the Museum: An Installation. Baltimore: Contemporary, 1994. Print.

On Jacmel’s CultureHadjadj, B. and Sancerni, A. (2010), Jacmel: A Centre for the Development of Culture and Tourism. Museum International, 62: 116–124.

On History of Jacmel and HaitiGilles, Jean-Elie, and Jean-Elie Gilles. Jacmel: Sa Contribution a L’histoire D’Haïti. Coconut Creek, FL: Educa Vision, 2002. Print.Beniamino, Michel, and Arielle Thauvin-Chapot. Mémoires Et Cultures: Haïti, 1804-2004 : Actes Du Colloque International De Limoges, 30 Septembre-1er Octobre 2004. Limoges: PULIM, 2006. Print.Dayan, Joan. 1995. Haiti, history, and the gods. Berkeley: University of California Press. Jeremy D. Popkin, You Are All Free: The Haitian Revolution and the Abolition of Slavery. Cam-bridge, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010

On Carnaval in Haiti and the CaribbeanGordon, Leah. Kanaval: Vodou, Politics and Revolution on the Streets of Haiti. London, England: Soul Jazz, 2010. Print.Paravisini-Gebert, Lizabeth. “Writers Playin’ Mas’: Carnival and the Grotesque inthe Contemporary Caribbean Novel.” In A History of Literature in the Caribbean.Ed. A. James Arnold. Vol. 3. Amsterdam: John Benjamin, 1997. 215–36

Bibliography

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On Tourism in Jacmel, the Caribbean and WorldwideHadjadj, B. and Sancerni, A. (2010), Jacmel: A Centre for the Development of Culture and Tourism. Museum International, 62: 116–124.Sheller, Mimi. Consuming the Caribbean: From Arawaks to Zombies. London: Routledge, 2003. Print.

Literary Inspiration [“Show, don’t Tell”] Baudelaire, Charles. 1974. Les Fleurs du mal. Selected Poems of Charles Baudelaire, trans. Geoffrey Wagner. New York, Grove PressHead, Bessie. A Question of Power. London: Heinemann Educational, 1974. PrintRoy, Arundhati. The God of Small Things. New York: Random House, 1997. Print.

On Oath of the AncestorsGrigsby, Darcy Grimaldo. “Black Revolution.” Extremities: Painting Empire in Post-revolutionary France. London: Yale UP, 2002. PrintWood, Susan. “Saving a Haitian National Icon.” Oakland Journal, 2010. Print

The Strategy behind the French Relief Operations in Haiti and their Initial Results- Christian Trézin- Museum InternationalLe Louvre invite J.M. G. Le Clézio- Musée MondeCatalogue de l’exposition- Art Contemporain- 5 Nov– 6 Fév

On Guillaume Guillon Lethière“Guillaume Guillon Lethiere.” PBS. PBS. Web. 30 May 2012. <http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/secret/famous/>Lethière, Guillaume Guillon. L’Association Des Amis De Guillaume Guillon Lethiere ... Présentent G. Guillon Lethiere, Pientre D’histoire, 1760-1832. Paris?: L’Association, 1991. Print.Weston, Helen. “The Oath of the Ancestors by Lethière ‘le mulâtre’: celebrating the black/mulatto al-liance in Haiti’s struggle for independence,” in An economy of colour: visual culture and the Atlantic World, 1660-1830, edited by Geoff Quilley and Kay Dian Kriz.

Other Resources“Remember Haiti.” Brown University. Web. 19 Jan. 2012. <http://www.brown.edu/Facilities/John_Carter_Brown_Library/remember_haiti/index.php>Sarkozy Visits Haiti despite Tensions-News on the International Dayhttp://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-4410-haiti-politic-martelly-is-convinced-and-has-made-announcements.html