Downtown Christiansted a place of commerce, politics, and leisure.

it's a place where one can find almost any tree to satisfy the palace or that special item found nowhere else it's a big island's eastern town and it's a town rich in history but for many the Christiansted town may be nothing more than a shopping district or a site on the way to work and while i'm sure many residents and visitors have visited this site on numerous occasions how many of them have actually taken the time out to learn more about this area's history do you know where it got its name from or when it was built well today we're going to explore these questions and many more as we rediscover the east side of our town starting with this yellow massive structure behind me come on let's go Fort Christianst an unmistakable landmark in the Christiansted town its size and bright color makes it almost impossible to miss built in the 1700s by Danes this fort served to protect now it stands as a gateway to the past well the fort was built mainly for harbor defense and also to make sure that the large slave population on the island of St. Croix was was kept in check the Danish government kept the garrison here they also had infantry as well as calvary the fort is a beacon it's an attraction many people from all over the world come to visit it as as well as our school children fort christian vern has seen several historical visitors to this area when we talk about the emancipation of slavery in 1848 this is where general governor Peter von Scholten had general Buddhoe in prison until he was sent off to Trinidad Alexander Hamilton mother Rachel was incarcerated here for a period of time we have uh dedicated uh the cell that she uh she served her time in and you could see that on the tour as well and in the 1980s we had then vice president George Bush came and paid a visit I was given the honor of conducting the tour myself when you first walk into the Christiansted Fort it may not appear that impressive don't get me wrong it is a charming fort but you really don't appreciate the historical value of the fort until you take a tour and learn exactly what took place within these walls mr colon could you tell us a little bit about the fork sure i could take a little bit of the fork um like also um the name of the park is christian said national historic site was established in 1952 and it consists of seven acres and within the seven acres we have six different buildings now the name of the fort is fort christian burn and vern is another one same defense in danish the four was built between 1730 and 1749 and was and it was built to enforce the law that was given by customs and also to protect the hardware and shipping some private sector tiers now eighty percent of the fort is made out of yellow bricks which is the one that you see on the ground and the other twenty percent is made out of the wood and the doors and the shutters okay okay the first ones i'm going to show you is the detention cells we have two here and we also have two behind us but i always show the visitors this one because still one still has the original floor and you can see the carvings on the wood now those carbons were made by people that went the detention cell during the danish time the purpose of this cell was to either for people that was waiting for tries to go to court or slaves around that ran away from the owners so they were recaptured they were brought into the fort and put in these cells until the owners came back for them now at a certain time after um if they had if they had caught anybody in town drunk they would bring them into a fort and put them in here to spend the night so how long well other than those who were found in town for a night how long of a period are people left in there um i'm not um probably until the owners came back for them and after the turn the time was a certain when the was it like one person um they were more than one person in here and as you can see there's also about four feet high so you can imagine anybody over that height they either have to be sitting down on the ground on lay down most of the time wow that's serious and if you think this holding cell is bad wait until you see the dungeon okay this is the dungeon and this is where they put the worst offenders and i kept that example of what was defensively either bringing down a cane field striking a white person the window that you see here before 1835 was only a nine inch square so you can imagine the ear and that light coming in here now the silver the little that you see behind you that was called the black hole and the reason it was called a black hole because it doesn't have any windows and there was the door to be closed you have to close any deck but it was put that was put in there and that cell was used for solitary confinement tell me a little bit about the conditions like about how many people were in here well we don't have any records of exactly how many but there were more than one person in here and the people that were put in here were put in here from months to a year now when they did get fed and one of the things if they had to go to the restaurant they would do it right here so you mean between that and the sweat and all that you can imagine the stench okay and i have to be like this most of the time i come down here it's definitely not a place you want to be in for any extended period of time so now we're standing in the room where the mother of one of our founding fathers was kept pretty amazing when you think about it you do know which alexander we're talking about right alexander hamilton born 1757 on the island of nevis moved to sanctuary with his mother father and brother when he was nine left the island at age 17 for schools and would go on to become a us army officer lawyer the first secretary of treasury under the nation's first president george washington creator of the federalist party and oh yeah among other things one of two chief authors of the federalist paper the most important interpretation of the us constitution that's right that alexander hamilton and his mother was jailed in this room what happened was and when she got here with her mother she was kind of forced into getting married to almost all the person that she was afterwards she wasn't too happy and she started doing things the guy wasn't too happy about it so he thought that by putting her in here for a couple of months she would shape up um but um after she got out of jail she stayed here and i left for a couple of months and then she moved over to signing to nevis i went to sing kids she was here for how long a couple of months a couple of months and then when she moved she went over to sink is that's where she met alexander hamilton's father okay from there they move over to nevis alexander was born in nevis and then he came here as a little guy okay slaves and prisoners were not the only ones kept at the fort of course soldiers also have their barracks here this is the barracks and the breakfast is where the soldiers slept and the soldiers are slept they were in charge of protecting the harbor i mean the four and the uh i know from slavery building an invasion from other nations and we set up the moon so you could have an idea how the four i mean the room would have been when it was out when the soldiers were outside doing the daily duties um the small boxes that you see in front of the best that's where they kept the person and belongings and the classes that's where they kept the uniforms now the soldiers were from between five four and five five they had up to about forty five utility soldiers in the fort and away from the fort they also had the barracks and those bars that had 170 soldiers in the barracks now this is the only way for both to act as the Christiansted harbor in the event that pirates or others tried to attack these cannons stood ready to fire okay this is the water battery these cannons that you see up here were only used for water defense and the cannons are weighed up to almost 4 700 pounds wow so what they did they needed six soldiers to operate these cannons so what they did they would put one soldier on each wheel one would be going up to the front and put the cannonball and a gunpowder to the cannon's mouth and the other one the last one will come up light up the fuse when the can is ready to be fired and he also will act as a captain now the cannons that you see here here the fire one and a quarter miles from here is more that's where the uh the reef is or a little bit farther than the reef now besides these candles up here they also had two other locations of the cannons at the entrance of the harbor they also had a little fortress with cannons there hotel on the key also had a cannon with some little fortress with cannons and then this one up here so they had like a triangular system protecting the harbor and the fort so anybody tried to attack they would fire the two outside cannons first and if they still pass through then the cannons up here would be fire now these were only used for water defense uh the crown that you see here is um to let you know that they were made in a royal factory and the l is for a town in norway called ludwig because nowhere in denmark were working together at that time okay approximately how many cannons does the foot you know have um then we have a level i don't know exactly how much we have okay any questions and where did the ammunition for the cannons come from well it came from this room situated right below the cannons this is what a typical cannonball looks like they were used as deadly weapons back in the 17th and 1800s to destroy pirate ships today they're used simply as decorations for the fort there are thousands of cannonballs that still remain why so many well let's just say that the fort never really defended itself the fort saw action twice but not a single shot was fired from it in its defense both times the british came in in the early 1800s and uh the commander of the fort surrendered without firing a shot these cannibals here are 18 pounds this is what he used for the main defense with a big handles up on the water battery and it will propel my black powder i'm going to show the room i'm going to show you next to the gunpowder magazine but before i show you that let me show you something here um with this one small window here one on the other side and if you look inside you won't be able to see anything inside the reason they did that is so nobody will try to light up a matching throw and try to blow up the gunpowder magazine because if they did that it would level down the whole fort so by the time they light up the match and go like this you know by just swinging the thing back and forth it's gonna turn off okay okay let's go inside okay um the barrels that you see on both sides um that's that's where they kept the gun powder they also have small barrels to move back and forth and the reason for the gun for the wooden floors and they're working with gunpowder they won't have any sparks instead of using a metal shield we use the wooden shovels like the ones they have right there on the wall and the boxes that you see there were used to prepare the ammunitions but they prepared the ammunitions in the another room we're going to show you in a couple of minutes and if you see the wall right in front of you you see that little opening right there that they um they did that and the two windows that i showed you first so the air could circulate because they needed the gunpowder to stay right if they got too wet they won't be able to to use it and as a matter of fact that one that you see there is 13 feet thick so this is the thickest part of the fort so the photographs are attacked it will hold up before start crumbling and also to support the big hands on the water battery okay this is the arsenal room this is where they kept the equipment for the big cannons and they also have their muskets here um the muskets the way they uh those operate they have to put everything from the top the gunpowder in the amnesties and then ram it down um the little boxes that you see right next to them that's what they have the ammunitions and the gunpowder okay um the little um the wooden swords are on on top but what you're looking at right now is a reproduction of what used to be here before about how many muskets were stored in here um i should be a little bit over 20. or just muskets and swords right over here the first one for example have two different ends the one end is used for cleaning the other one is to push the cannonball all the way back to the cannon on the one with the coils after they fire the cannons a couple of times if they wanted to clean it inside they would use that to scrape the gunpowder that stayed inside the one with the scoops and the way that the way that would work they would put the gunpowder in a sack put it in that stick with the scoop and shove it all the way to the back of the cannon and then turn it upside down like this so when i pull the stick back out the gunpowder stays inside um those little sticks are they have sticks like those two if they want to change the angle of the cannon to fire at different angles the table that you see here this is where they also prepare the ammunitions for the big cannons upstairs the boxes that you saw the other room that would bring those boxes over here put two cannon balls and a gunpowder seal it and take it upstairs that one doesn't have to be running up and down the stairs to be getting the gunpowder or the cannonball and the table was also used as a work table if the musketeers weren't working they would bring them over here take them apart fix them and put them back together again okay and they look heavy they're pretty long so they have to get a good feeling for it and you know and practice how to use it and this room the best preserved room in the fort okay this is the office's age room this is where the sergeant will come and do a daily report of what he did during the day and when he's not around the junior officers that were off duty would spend the time here either talking to each other reading books or play games okay okay so in the evening they were found in the barack barack obama right so they but they probably had soldiers doing night shift also like for example the red center little box that you see in front they had a different soldier on god for 24 hours so they probably had soldiers working in the daytime and all the soldiers working on the nighttime okay why why is it sealed right now we seal it right now because this whole section has air conditioning we don't want it here to escape okay and what kind of contents do you have inside see you have we have the jacket that you see right here on the chair that's part of a danish uniform okay and that's an original jacket and by just looking at that jacket you can see the height and the you know the built of the person they were too that was a very interesting tour however the history does not end here there's still plenty more to learn in this area of town christensen national historic site was established by the secretary of the interior in 1952 the seven acre site which consists of fort christian vern the steeple building the customs house the scale house and the former slave trading compound more commonly known as the old post office was set aside by the department of interior to interpret the danish west indies way of life from 1733 to 1917 when the islands were sold to the united states for 25 million dollars in gold christian said was the heart of commerce and the scale house served as the the way station the original scale is still in the floor it's over 180 years old it's on display currently and this is where the planters would bring in their their crop to be shipped to either back to europe or to the united states and this is where the weights and measures took place right here at the scale house when you look at the custom house it was actually the first danish post office the top floor was the post office for the danish government and the the bottom floor of the first floor was actually where you paid your custom duties now the old post office or the danish west india guinea company warehouse is actually today the world's largest former slave trading compound on the u.s flag we know from our records that over 50 000 enslaved africans were sold from that building the national park service has plans to restore that building so that on the first floor of that building we can do a slave trade museum we're standing outside the steeple museum known to residents better as the steeple building or the steeple tower outside is a simple rectangular structure but inside come on let's take a look oh this folded wow nice isn't it okay the building you're in right now is called the steeple building and the building goes back to 1753 the tower the tower was added between 1794 and 1796. there was one of the the first lutheran church that was brought over to the island um the building this mirror right here will give you a good idea how the church was set up so the altar was right here in the middle the pulpit was by this door and the banks that you see with people inside that was called the governor's box and that was so him and his family and it would have been on that side of the room okay now the building was used as a lutheran church until 1831. now during 1825 in 1827 it got damaged at several hurricanes the people didn't want to spend much money repairing the building so they got the one on the king street with the permission of the king of denmark so what they did in the some of the stuff that they had here they moved over to the church for example the church i mean the altar that was here they're still using it in the literary church on king street now now after 1831 the building had different functions it was a military deport a hospital a school a town hall and a sunday and public school how many people can this building um close to about a hundred now the pures that you see here are not the original reproductions of what used to be here before and uh one of the things that the church did was in order to get funds to to keep the church running the rent appeals to people that will come to church now the people that couldn't afford to rent the piers that had benches on the side for them okay okay so everything else was the floor so this floor this is this is still the original floor the structure of the fort is still the same and the only thing that we replace in this building has is his spin the roof okay now just to give you a different dimension of the building the width is 26.8 feet the length is 27.5 feet and if you want to measure the from the floor all the way up to the ceiling is 18 feet thank you so much mr cologne for this fabulous tour you're welcome it was my pleasure it was truly a great thank you hey you enjoyed it thank you you're welcome so much history and it's all in such a small seven acre property i had a great time today and i hope you did too if you haven't already take some time out to explore and learn more about this familiar location and always remember to cherish your home cherish this beautiful island but most of all cherish each other we'll see you next time you