Jonah Engle, October 9, 2009.

Port-au-Prince – Efforts to save Port-au-Prince’s gingerbread houses were given a boost this week by a leading cultural heritage preservation group. The New York City-based World Monuments Fund included the houses on its 2010 watch list, which was announced on Tuesday.

The list, which is published every two years, aims to bring international attention to threatened cultural heritage sites around the world. The Fund also provides direct support in the form of training, expertise and funding to some of the sites.

“It will give us a big boost,” said Frederick Mangones, Secretary General of the Association of Haitian Planners and Architects – a group that is trying to protect the remaining buildings.

The elegant houses with their detailed wooden latticework and graceful balconies were designed to take advantage of prevailing winds. The first examples were built in the late 19th century and were mostly designed by three Haitian architects trained in Paris, Georges Baussan, Leon Mathon and Joseph-Eugee Maximilien. A 1925 law banning wooden houses to reduce the risk of fire marked the end of their construction.

Mangones said he didn’t know how many houses were still standing but they were vanishing an alarming rate “A lot have disappeared in the last eight to ten years, many beautiful ones,” said Mangones. Jacqui Labrom who leads tours of the houses said in the past few months alone two have been torn down and one has been closed up.

The Institute for the Protection of National Heritage (ISPAN) has recently begun a project to identify all the remaining houses in a bid to preserve those that remain. But Mangones said even when houses have been classified as heritage sites by the government; it hasn’t guaranteed their survival.

One of the biggest issues is the cost of maintaining the wooden structures, some of which are quite large. “The state can classify these homes as heritage sites, but it has to help you, whether its tax credits or something else,” said Mangones, adding that he tried to get banks to give favorable loans to people who wanted to restore their houses. “They said it’s a great idea, but nothing came of it.”

Preservationists are now working with HELP, a non-profit that owns a gingerbread house, the maison Bazin, in Port-au-Prince. The plan is to fix it up and use it as a model for other homes.

Holly Evarts, the World Monuments Fund’s communication director said the Fund is still deciding how it will be able to lend assistance to some of the 93 sites around the world on the latest watch list.

Evarts said the Fund is particularly interested in urban conservation programs that bring economic benefits to the local community and hoped that that could be a model for saving the gingerbread houses which are clustered in the Bois Verna neighborhood near downtown Port-au-Prince.

Whatever assistance the Fund decides to offer, making the list is already significant, according to Mangones. “If we are on the list, we aren’t just anybody,” said Mangones, adding that it will make it easier for preservation initiatives to find funding.

This is the first time a Haitian site has been chosen since the watch list began in 1996.