National Museum of Saint Kitts
National museum in the 1894 Old Treasury Building, long the landing gateway to Basseterre.
The Old Treasury Building stands at the point where the old Basseterre waterfront meets the reclaimed ground of Port Zante. A wooden treasury with a lighthouse had stood here from 1857, but heat and damp reduced it, and a stone replacement was begun in 1894, its foundation stone laid by Lady Haynes-Smith in March that year. Built of hand-cut white stone at a cost of about £6,350, its arched entrance served as the formal point of arrival into the town in the age of sea travel.
The Treasury moved out in 1996 and the St Christopher National Trust took the building over, opening the National Museum there in 2002. Three galleries follow the island from the Amerindian settlement of the Carib and Arawak periods through European colonisation, the sugar estates and the enslavement of Africans, to the labour movement, the sugar industry's closure and independence in 1983. The Trust also keeps its offices and reference collections in the building.
Highlights
- The 1894 Old Treasury Building, the historic landing gateway to Basseterre
- Three galleries from Amerindian settlement to independence in 1983
- Displays on the sugar estates, enslavement and the labour movement
- Headquarters and reference collections of the St Christopher National Trust
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