St. George Mall, also called Port Mall, is one of the oddest blends of of architecural styles and influences you will run across - by either name you call it. Its design is a combination of Elizabethan, Renaissance Tudor, Art Deco and Post-Modern architectural styles with Palladian columns, decorated cornices, gothic arches, and domed and vaulted ceilings. The mall also has lively mosaic patterns inlaid in its floors and walls, which are made from marble, redbrick or stone. At the mall’s centre, you’ll find a covered courtyard with impressive columns and an imposing statue of the Madonna. Built between 1995 and 1997, the four-storey building features a collection of small, local shops, a café, lounge and nightclub. Micheal Lee-Chin, Port Antonio native, and member of the Forbes billionaire's list, has bought the mall along with the rest of the town square, and is renovating this property. It looks great and is gonna be better.
Christ Church, a redbrick Anglican church that is vaguely Romanesque in architecture. The church dates from 1840 and was designed by Annesley Voysey, who adorned it with a large stained-glass window and wooden pews. At the turn of the 20th century, the Boston Fruit Company-growing rich on the bananas being shipped out of Port Antonio-donated the church's eagle lectern. The word from a local political party official is that the inside of the church has been renovated.
Folly House was built by Alfred Mitchell, an American millionaire. In 1901, he bought a 90-acre estate and began constructing a grand two-story mansion with 60 rooms, Doric columns, inner-courtyards and impressive stairways. Within 5 years of its completion, the mansion began to crumble. The locals legend is that Mitchell was so cheap that he mixed the cement with seawater - what a folly! The most logical theory is, however, that the use of an ill-proportioned mixture of marl and cement, as well as the position of the house, facing the full brunt of the ocean breeze, caused it to fall into ruin.
DeMontevin Lodge was built in the early 1900s. This Victorian style building was home to the then Custos of Portland, David Gideon. It is thought that Gideon brought the elaborate ironwork, barley columns and veranda rails, which adorn the exterior of the house, from America. In recent years, DeMontevin Lodge has been extensively renovated and refurbished and has been declared a National Heritage site. The lodge operates as a guesthouse and restaurant, and is filled with antiques. The DeMontevin has changed hands and the outside appearance has been spruced up.
Trident Castle's 40,000 sq. foot Austrian baroque fantasy with its rococo stonework was the creation of Baroness Fahmi, Port Antonio's most flamboyant resident. She sold it to the architect, Earl Levy, scion of one of the most prominent Jamaican families. It's been bought by Mr. Lee-Chin and the hotel is being renovated.
