10/13/2023 0 Comments Isale ebutteThere is the old Law School building on Igbosere Road, behind the Court, which is a few minutes walk from a top-class well-preserved building, over a hundred years old, owned by the late Mr. Kakawa Street also hosts the stately well-maintained Da Rhoca house. The building has the Centre for Black and African Art as its new occupants. The Street is also home to a prominent Prison, opposite the Hospital and next to it is the old building of the former Federal Office of Statistics, now the Bureau of Statistics. These buildings house the Government’s old Press, where it prints its Gazettes and other official documents, its hospital, Kakawa Magistrate Court, built in 1925, which stands on Kakawa Street corner, opposite the defunct Savannah Bank building, the old Central Bank building and its other auxiliary institutions. This touch of class in graceful architecture is also in public buildings on the Island, particularly on both sides of Broad Street, where a row of them stands. The successful ones built their homes there and, although these buildings are old, they are still awe-inspiring. It is an area where the first generation of returnees from Brazil settled. Most of these buildings are Brazilian, with a sprinkling of European-style houses around the Sangrouse Market and Tapa Street area where Alake House stands. Its old windows and doors are of opaque glass panes, which are unchanged regardless of time, but will need a bit of renovation. However, solid and not all that bad to look at, the building needs a little bit of spit and polish. In addition, the CFAO building at the corner of Igbosere and Moloney roads, one of the buildings government maintains, tells its healthy story, which is different from the story of a family building on 91 Igbosere road right behind Lagos Island City Hall. For instance, Igbore House at the link between Bambose and Glover Streets is still firm looking. They are interesting structures that tell different stories about time and people. Other families keep the original façade and poise of the building, enlivening it with splash of paint when cash-flow permits, like the Ms Baptist house on Bornu Way, Yaba. Most families demolish their old buildings to make way for modern buildings, like the Multi Radiant Plaza, Fowler family and Rufai Ajala family houses on Bambose and Oshodi streets and at the corner-piece of Bambose and Glover streets. It is an urban jungle and until now, defies the desire of several authorities to redevelop it, and because Lagosians are careful about land issues, it is very difficult to resolve the planning challenges of Isale Eko. ![]() Isale Eko is a prime location, right in the heart of the central business district. Lagos Island is now a veritable urban jungle, a real mess that is unacceptable in other parts of the world, especially because of its commercial worth. Even in ruins, these buildings retain their charm and it is obvious to everyone, not only to lovers of beautiful architecture. However, a few of the descendants of the original owners make limited attempts to maintain their structure to keep the memory alive. ![]() There are rows of these regal buildings in ruins across the country and particularly in Lagos both on the Island and in Yaba and Ebute-Metta areas. It restructures some of them as hotels or restaurants, but in Nigeria, these monuments suffer neglect and are left to rot. Government lists such houses, which it maintains and, in all cases, become tourists’ attractions, even though people live in them. It is standard practice in the western world to preserve old stately buildings as part of a nation’s rich cultural heritage for posterity. ![]() Bennett Oghifo, who visited families still living in some of these elegant buildings, also discussed the need for their restoration with John Godwin (now late), a Professor of Architecture at the University of Lagos. However, this is not the case in Nigeria because experts say it does not matter to the average person, grappling with myriads of avoidable daily concerns, adjudged consequences of bad governance. Besides, they become must-see places tourists visit regularly. In Europe, such important buildings become part of the nation’s rich culture, which the government guards jealously. Lagos and some ancient cities in Nigeria are dotted with rare 19th and 20th century architectural masterpieces that earn a right to listing as national monuments. To compute a nation’s heritage in terms of its financial strength or its political achievements will do it a lot of injustice, because its worth is actually an aggregate of the people’s history, which captures, among their other beautiful attributes, the way they live, as well as their various types of architecture.
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