Devon House

George Stiebel, who made his fortune in mining and shipping in Venezuela before returning home reputedly Jamaica's first Black millionaire, built Devon House at Half Way Tree in 1881 as a residence to match his standing. Its designer, Charles P. Lazarus, was not a professional architect — he worked as an iron founder and as engineer to the Kingston and Liguanea Water Works Company, and doubled as a local political figure — but the house he gave Stiebel follows Jamaican Georgian convention with a discipline that has made it the reference point for the type: a symmetrical brick-and-timber block wrapped in wraparound verandahs, its jalousied windows and deep eaves tuned against the island heat, its wrought-iron gates shipped in for the purpose. The house passed through several owners after Stiebel's death in 1896 and stood empty and threatened with demolition by 1965, when the Jamaican government bought it outright to save it. Restored as a museum, it now anchors a complex of craft shops, restaurants and gardens in Kingston, and remains one of the island's most visited heritage sites.