Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
The House of Culture
Regent St, east of St John's Cathedral • Daily 9am-4pm • Bz$10 •
T
227 3050,
W
nichbelize.org
East of St John's Cathedral, the colonial Government House, now restored and
renamed the
House of Culture
, has a beautiful, breezy, seafront setting, shaded by royal
palms and complete with an immaculate lawn. Built in 1814, it was the governor's
residence when Belize was a British colony; at midnight on September 20, 1981, the
Belize flag was hoisted here for the first time as the country celebrated independence.
The house has always been used for o
cial receptions, particularly on Independence
Day. But the present governor-general, Sir Colville Young, wanted to make this superb
example of Belize's colonial heritage open to everyone, so in 1996 it was designated a
museum
, later becoming the House of Culture. A flight of steps under a columned
portico leads to the front door; inside, a plush, red carpet stretches down the hall to a
great mahogany staircase, and beyond here doors open onto the back porch,
overlooking the sea. On the grounds, the carefully restored
Sea King
, the tender of
Baron Bliss's yacht of the same name, stands as testimony to the skill of Belizean
boatbuilders. The plant-filled gardens are a haven for birds and it's worth bringing a
pair of binoculars.
A wide range of Belizean arts are presented here, among them painting, dance,
Garifuna
drumming, musical performances and, in a room off the front porch,
contemporary visual arts. It's also a popular venue for weddings and banquets. In the
main room, a panoramic painting of Belize City in the early 1900s overlooks the
collection of colonial silverware, glass and furniture, while a different room displays a
fascinating compilation of vintage photographs and postcards of Belize.
1
EMORY KING
Any sailor shipwrecked on a foreign shore would doubtless be grateful to the land that saved
him, but only one who'd been unfathomably moved by the experience would want to spend
the rest of his life there. That's exactly what happened to
Emory King
(1931-2007),
American-born wit, raconteur, estate agent, historian, broadcaster, writer, businessman and
film extra, when his schooner
Vagabond
crashed onto the coral off English Caye, British
Honduras in 1953. Realizing that the colony presented unrivalled opportunities to a young
man of limited means but boundless entrepreneurial spirit, he stayed on, intrigued by this
colonial backwater.
Finding the
Belize City
of the early 1950s much like a nineteenth-century village, with only
a handful of cars (which, to his astonishment, drove on the left), a sickly electric power system
and a few telephones to represent the modern age, he set about trying to change it. Working
first as Secretary of the Chamber of Commerce, then Secretary of the Tourist Committee (when
tourists were counted in dozens), Emory advised foreign investors and found land for
American farmers in search of the next frontier. His most enduring gift to his adopted country,
however, was persuading the
Mennonites
(see box, p.71) to settle here in 1958; their
back-breaking pioneer work is Belize's greatest agricultural success story.
Emory King's involvement in Belize led to cameo roles in all the Hollywood movies filmed
here. In
The Mosquito Coast
(1985), based on the novel by Paul Theroux, he played a down-at-
heel, drunken landowner offering to sell Harrison Ford a piece of land - a part he claimed was
not typecasting. In 1998 the government appointed him
film commissioner
, and he soon
secured the production of
After the Storm
, based on the Hemingway short story and filmed in
Placencia and Ambergris Caye, followed by the “reality television” series
Temptation Island
, and
the establishment of the
Belize Film Festival
(
W
belizefilmfestival.com).
King died in 2007, but his
topics
about Belize live on, and are sold all over the country; a
good one to start with is
Hey Dad
,
This is Belize
, a whimsical account of family life, followed by
I Spent it All in Belize
(which includes the highly astute line, “If you want to be a millionaire
in Belize, you'd better come with two million”). His
website
,
W
emoryking.com, provides
everything you need to know about the man - or at least everything that he was
prepared
