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Bourguignon’s photographs show this view, both in broad expanse and in some detail.  The largest structures seen from the surrounding hillsides are the impressive presidential palace near the Champ-de-Mars and, close by, the military barracks, the Catholic Cathedral, the massive Iron Market, and the large cemetery.  The American Embassy was housed in a large rented villa on one corner of the Champ-de Mars.  The style of some older houses owed much to French tropical colonial architecture of the 19th century—wooden structures with arcades and balconies, shutters and unglazed windows.  Even in the center of the city there were open sewers and houses were built on masonry bases that raised them above street level.  On the steep hillsides, houses flanked rutted gullies where torrential rains had washed out dirt streets. 

The city is surrounded by hillside slums (PH 601–63) of varying degrees of poverty.  There are, practically speaking, no streets, only rutted passages that become deeper with each tropical rainstorm.  There are open sewers, bridged by planks at each house.  Many houses are raised from street level by stone bases. 

From his location at the Hotel Excelsior, a family-owned and operated hotel-pension patronized primarily by Haitian travelers, Bourguignon had a broad view of the Champ-de-Mars—the parade grounds—and surroundings.  He took pictures of the central streets of the city but avoided the elite homes, which seemed of little interest to him.  They were the stuff of tourist brochures, he thought.  It was the life on the streets, the port, the market activities, the festivals—all amid pervasive poverty—that attracted his attention.

Markets and commerce:

The port, surrounded by markets, served both foreign and local trade and transportation.  The principal exports were coffee (small scale independent producers), sugar cane (HASCO), and bananas (Standard Fruit, Brown and Root).  From the coastal

 


Continued

Table of Contents, Collection B | Table of Contents, Collection C

Page last revised: July 31, 2007

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