Many years (generations) later, it is reported that a descendant of the Mexican Silvera family was visiting Kingston and stayed at the Myrtle Bank Hotel. On admiring the flowers in the hotel, he was told that they came from Mr. Alexis Silvera's nursery near the Hotel. The Silvera from Mexico visited Alexis at his nursery, and invited him to visit the family in Mexico. Alexis did not make the trip."
Hannah's groundbreaking post follows in the tradition of his grandfather, Evon Blake, a journalist and author who broke the color barrier in Jamaica when he jumped into the "whites only" swimming pool at Myrtle Bank Hotel in Kingston. It was an unheard-of act of defiance at that point in Jamaican history and resonated through the years.
an antidote to decay the government created the Kingston Waterfront Redevelopment Company to reclaim, redesign and upgrade 95 acres along the waterfront. The project produced a nucleus of wide landscaped boulevards and multi-storey buildings which include the Bank of Jamaica, Scotia Bank Centre, the Jamaica Conference Centre, and Kingston Mall. Casualties of the redevelopment process were the once famous Myrtle Bank Hotel, the picturesque finger piers jutting out from Port Royal Street, and historic Victoria Market, scene of traditional Sunday and Christmas markets for over a hundred years.
THE new home of the Jamaica Stock Exchange at 40 Harbour Street has an interesting history. Historians believe that the site, together with the land next to it, may have once been an Arawak fishing village. Fresh water was said to be provided to the village by a network of underground springs which still exist today. In modern times, the site has been occupied for over 100 years. The first structure, a private house, fell down in the 1907 earthquake. The building which replaced it was used for industrial purposes, and was acquired by the United Fruit Company in 1920 shortly after that company bought the adjacent Myrtle Bank Hotel. Both buildings were remodelled in the same style, with the architectural flourishes typical of the period. The Myrtle Bank Hotel was to become one of the most famous hotels in the world until it was destroyed by fire in the 1960s. The United Fruit Company made 40 Harbour Street its headquarters in Jamaica until the 1950s, and eventually sold it to the Urban Development Corporation in 1971. It was later acquired from the UDC by the Kingston Restoration Company and purchased by the Jamaica Stock Exchange in 1995.
I was born in Kingston many, many years ago. Attended the Priory School when Mr. Fowler was headmaster & Gov. Foote was in residence. Loved the ocean-side pool at Port Royal. Mom worked at Myrtle Bank Hotel.
Gradually post-earthquake Kingston was rebuilt. Myrtle Bank Hotel and Evelyn-Feurtado's South Camp Road Hotel were in operation, as also Mrs. Macdougall's cheaper Waldeck House in East Street
FLEMING: I first went to Jamaica on a Naval Intelligence assignment around 1942 to meet with my American opposite numbers from the Office of Naval Intelligence to see if we could do something about the U-boat sinkings in the Caribbean. I stayed in the good old Myrtle Bank Hotel, and it poured every day--and I loved every minute of it. I'd never been in the topics before and I thought they were wonderful, as I suppose any Scotsman would. I was determined that at the end of the War I'd come back and find a plot and build a house and live in it whenever I could.
Alexis Silvera b. 1838, Jamaica, BWI occ. Grew flowers, Harbor St. Supplied Myrtle Bank Hotel Kingston edu. rel. d. 1933
