The Tribune

We are all guilty of it, we look at a city or a neighbourhood and see the big picture without stopping to think how it got that way - tall buildings or low level, peaked roofs or flat, classic or contemporary style, sprawling properties or narrow frontage. Rarely do we stop to wonder whose hand helped shape that built environment, or if there was a singular hand that left its mark on what stands today.

This week, with the arrival on island of a long-anticipated book, we got a look at the life and work of an architect who helped shape the beauty of The Bahamas.

His name is Henry Melich and the book, Island Follies, (Rizzoli) is the result of a 20-year labour of love by his daughter, Tanya Melich Crone, along with author and architectural historian Alastair Gordon and the design and production team headed by Barbara DeVries.

Chris Blackwell, the man credited with discovering Bob Marley, wrote the foreword. A lifelong fan of Melich’s work, Blackwell refused to allow anyone else to design anything for him from his home in Jamaica to his residence in The Bahamas or his Compass Point studios where music greats gathered and recorded, and later Compass Point resort, now closed.

Melich, a partner in the firm of Robjohns and Melich, was a force of nature, a romantic personality whose good looks, intellectual curiosity and love of life were mirrored in the buildings he designed. There were more than 150 of them, including the home of Sir Lynden Pindling, Lakeview in Skyline Heights, though Pindling caught heat for a policy of Bahamianization and choosing a foreign-born architect to design his own home. No one ever accused the country’s first black Prime Minister of poor taste. He wanted the best and he defended his choice of the Czech-born, British-trained architect who had worked on St Paul’s Cathedral and Westminister Abbey in London and arrived in The Bahamas in 1954 and had, years earlier, been granted residency with right to work.

Though best-known for the glamour he brought to Lyford Cay, where he designed at least 30 homes, many with extraordinary stonework, statues, gardens flanked by gates with pools whose lines looked like art, Melich’s influence shaped historic Nassau. It was his hand that created one of the most beautiful buildings in the city centre, the Fendi shop at the corner of Charlotte and Bay Streets, now undergoing renovation to become a Starbuck’s. (May the second storey arched window be preserved forever.)

He designed Coin of the Realm and the courtyard between it and what was the Scottish shop and Brass & Leather. He designed Norfolk House on Frederick Street with its inspiring interior patio that feels like such a luxury in prime downtown real estate. The Town Court Apartments were his, as was Harbour Mews and several buildings on West Hill Street, including one of the most architecturally profound,

The Melich design flair lives on from east to west in New Providence – the cottages of Western Shores, Carefree, The Islands Club, Delaporte – the latter now one of the hottest Airbnb or short-term rental properties in the country.

Most of all, Henry Melich will be remembered for the imprint he left on Rawson Square. He moulded downtown historic Nassau with structures like the Churchill Building where Cabinet met for decades, until lack of maintenance and elements of nature turned it into a tear-down this year. At one time, its hundreds of wooden shutters that protected it against hurricanes were a landmark. But like so many historic structures, its integrity was sacrificed to neglect.

Meantime, the Melich touch lives on in Harbour Island, the Windermere Club and Lyford Cay where even the names of homes he designed have a whimsical flair – Xanadu, Pavilion, The Castle, Tivoli, and even in the heartbeat of the nation, the capital of Nassau where among other structures remain the intact buildings created by his design and his civil engineering knowledge. There is the old Nassau Shop, now John Bull, and Sunley Square across from Rawson Square, a 30,000 square foot structure built on reclaimed land and supported by 265 pylons driven down 40 feet into bedrock. High fashion Gucci shoes and bags now adorn the northern shopfront windows of the building that stretches from Bay Street and Bank Lane south almost to the city police station.

One architect’s engineering, and his dedication to creating what a client wanted, even to the extreme as in The Castle, left a footprint and legacy that helped shape the beauty we know as historic Nassau and the glamour still revered by the rich and famous who live behind the gates of Lyford Cay.

Had it not been for his daughter’s dedication and determination to find the photos and hire photographers for three years to trace the details of the amazing path that led to the production of Island Follies, we may never have appreciated the magic of one man, Henry Melich.

Want to rescue Bay Street? All historic Nassau needs is a single decision

I could write ad nauseum about what’s wrong with downtown Nassau, but what’s the point? You can see it with your own eyes. I’d much rather focus on the potential.

Cast those same eyes that see an unplanted planter on the amazing architecture, on the good bones of so many buildings, the A-line pointed rooflines lined up like a board game or a movie set made for a stuntman to jump from one to the next. Look at the lines and the leaded glass of the majestic Masonic Temple or the inviting open doorways flanked by mahogany of John Bull. Look past the present and see the future. Take note of the dirt, the broken tiles, the yet to be replanted planters, the tacky handwritten signs taped to store windows on a side street, the cluttered sandwich board signs that crowd the already overcrowded sidewalks, the garish too-large, out of proportion signs and say what is wrong with this picture. There is history here.

Why is it not being told? There are thousands walking past these structures and settling for tee-shirts.

What Nassau lacks, what Nassau needs is a mayor or manager, not a political appointee but someone who loves Nassau like a treasure you want to protect and preserve forever. I’ve said it a million times – so often that you are tired of hearing it and I wonder why I keep repeating it but here is the truth.

You don’t open a mom-and-pop shop over the hill without a manager in place yet we open the City of Nassau every day, the gateway to our country, the first place that the masses of the seven million visitors a year we receive, with no management in place.

What ARE we thinking?