Here is one of my favourite buildings in Guyana; the old hospital in New Amsterdam. Sadly, it was pulled down a few months after I took this photograph, but here is what I wrote about it in 'Wild Coast':-
It was all painted yellow and green, and was three storeys high and two blocks long. When it was built in 1881, it must have been one of the grandest hospitals in South America. Amidst the grandeur I could see clapboard, frets, frills, crystal lights, balconies, demi-lune windows, rooftop pagodas, and an enormous wrought-iron staircase cascading down the front. It was that particularly British style that’s never seen anywhere else. I’ve always wondered what it’s called. Neo-pavilionism? The Regatta Movement? Or perhaps Seaside Realism? As no-one was around, I decided to slip through the fence, and take a look inside.
It was only then I realised the whole place was abandoned. Everything was in place but all the patients had gone. I climbed up through the wards and the old dispensaries. There were bottles on the shelves, and beds scattered down the stairs. It was as if everyone had received terrible news, and had just jumped up and left. I came across a note for Mr Vanderbilt’s steroids, and a coffin in the yard. I even found a photocopier, paralysed mid-copy, and now richly slathered in droppings. I was surprised that no-one was stealing all these things.
‘But dey are,’ said the waitress at Diner’s End.
She explained that there’d been guards for a while.
‘What happened to them?’
‘Dunno. Even they’s gone.’
‘And now it’s all quiet?’
‘No, I don’t sleep at night for de noise.’
‘Noise?’
‘Junkies, tearing up de zinc.’
‘And you don’t know what’s going to happen to it all?’
The girl smiled wearily. ‘Everything here fall down.’