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Class Status And Identity: A Semantic Reading Of The Typical Trinidadian House, Leniqueca Welcome

Inquiry: The University of Arkansas Undergraduate Research Journal

This manuscript analyzes the use of ornamentation on the exterior of residential architecture, in early 20thcentury Trinidad, as a hybridized product of a class system developed during Colonialism. The manuscript begins with the examination of the socio-political context of late 18th, 19th and early 20th century Trinidadian society, looking specifically at how a boom in the cocoa industry in the 1870’s allowed social mobility for free coloreds and blacks. As a result, this nouveau bourgeois class of cocoa planters sought to affirm their status by displaying their identity in the strongly European influenced houses they designed. The architectural details and …