Palais National No More
It is FINALLY demolished. It should not have been demolished in my opinion. It should have been preserved AS a RUIN. The conscious effort to erase significant symbols is always a mistake.
World News France to rebuild Haiti's presidential palace Posted: 28 January 2010 0721 hrs
PORT-AU-PRINCE: Haitian President Rene Preval said Wednesday France has offered to rebuild the ruined presidential palace, whose collapsed cupola has become a symbol of the devastated quake-hit nation.The French "ambassador has told me that France is ready to rebuild the national palace as it was," Preval told a press conference at the government's temporary headquarters near the airport. The imposing white domed building, designed by the Haitian architect Georges Baussan, was constructed in 1918 during the time of the American occupation, and was modelled on the White House, guide books say.
According to wikipedia (20.Dec2012 here are some details about this building:
wikipedia The National Palace presently occupying the site was designed in 1912 by Georges H. Baussan (1874–1958), a leading Haitian architect who graduated from the Ecole d'Architecture in Paris and whose commissions included the City Hall of Port-au-Prince and Haiti's Supreme Court Building. He was a son of a former Haitian senator and the father of Robert Baussan, an architect who studied under Le Corbusier and later became the country's Undersecretary of State for Tourism. Baussan's classical design was chosen from a range of plans submitted by Haitian and French architects in a national competition in 1912, His entry was awarded the second-place prize but also was selected to be the new National Palace, for financial reasons—the structure proposed by the first-place winner was deemed too costly.
The construction budget for the new palace was set at $350,000 and work began in May 1914.By 1915, however, the under-construction palace was set ablaze by a mob that ousted and assassinated President Vilbrun Guillaume Sam. A contemporary news report stated the palace "has been partially destroyed after an early-morning attack which lasted several hours". After President Sam's death the country was occupied by the United States, with American forces taking possession of the palace and U. S. naval engineers overseeing its completion. The building was finished in 1920.
Georges H. Baussan's 1912 design for the National Palace of Haiti.
1869 qui renversa le gouvernement du président Sylvain Salnave[3]. Le second Palais national a été détruit quant à lui en 1912 lors de l'explosion d'une poudrière au niveau du sous-sol. Cette explosion tua aussi le président de l'époque, Cincinnatus Leconte, un an et un jour après son investiture, ainsi que plusieurs centaines de soldats. Cependant, la famille du président Leconte a pu s'échapper indemne
Le Palais national actuel fut construit en 1918 sur les plans de Georges Baussan (1874-1958), un architecte haïtien de premier plan, fils d'un ancien sénateur, et qui avait étudié à l'école des beaux-arts de Paris. En 1929, un visiteur décrira Baussan comme « une griffe, c'est-à-dire de couleur de peau brune, mi-chemin entre noir et mulâtre ; il était au-delà de la quarantaine, un homme large, lourd, beau, avec des moustaches délicates, cheveux frisés ; dans son visage intelligent, il avait une expression d'une tristesse voilée, qui, combinée avec sa grandeur et la légère teinte jaune dans les blancs de ses globes oculaires, me faisait penser à un tendre chien Saint-Bernard »
Comme d'autres édifices publics d'Haïti, le Palais national de Baussan puise sur la tradition de l'architecture classique française et ressemble grandement aux structures érigées en France métropolitaine, ainsi que dans son Empire colonial pendant la fin du XIXe siècle, incluant l’Hôtel de Ville de Port-au-Prince, une autre création de Baussan. Avant le tremblement de terre, le bâtiment possédait trois étages et son pavillon d'entrée était constitué d'un portique avec quatre colonnes ionique. Le toit avait trois dômes et aussi un bon nombre de chien-assis. Le palais est entièrement peint en blanc.