Georgetown Seawall, 1830 Lighthouse and Umana Yana Guide

In the northernmost ward of Kingston, where the Demerara River pours its silt-rich waters into the Atlantic Ocean, three landmarks tell the story of how Georgetown defends itself from the sea while celebrating its maritime and Indigenous roots: the 1830 brick Georgetown Lighthouse, the 16.7-metre Wai-Wai thatched cone of the Umana Yana, and the oceanfront promenade of the Georgetown Seawall.

The Georgetown Seawall (1855 to 1892) and 1903 Bandstand

Because Georgetown's coastal plain sits one to two metres below high-tide Atlantic sea level, early nineteenth-century spring tides repeatedly breached the earthen dams protecting Kingston and Camp House (the governor's residence). After a catastrophic flood in February 1855, colonial authorities commissioned engineer Captain Kilgour to build a permanent stone masonry barrier using granite blocks quarried along the Mazaruni and Essequibo rivers. Constructed with convict labour between 1855 and 1892, the Georgetown Seawall stretches east from Fort William Frederick at the Demerara River mouth past Kingston, Kitty, and Ogle.

Today the wide paved wall top, painted with colourful Guyanese wildlife and heritage murals, is the capital's favourite late-afternoon walking, cycling, and jogging promenade. Just opposite High Street stands the octagonal cast-iron Seawall Bandstand, erected in 1903 as a memorial to Queen Victoria. Visit between 16:30 and 18:30 on any day of the week (and especially on Sunday afternoons and evenings for the weekly Seawall Lime) to feel the brisk northeast Atlantic trade winds, drink fresh cold coconut water cut with a cutlass right on the promenade, and watch frigatebirds and scarlet ibises glide along the shore.

The Georgetown Lighthouse (1830) on Water Street

Three blocks inland from the river mouth on Water Street rises the octagonal red-and-white striped Georgetown Lighthouse. Constructed in 1830 by Dutch and British engineers to replace an earlier 1817 wooden tower, it is the oldest surviving brick structure in Georgetown. To prevent the heavy masonry tower from sinking into the soft alluvial mud of the Demerara estuary, engineers floated the base on a raft of 49 greenheart timber piles driven deep into the clay. Rising 31 metres (103 feet) to its cast-iron lantern gallery, the lighthouse still guides ocean vessels entering the Demerara channel.

Umana Yana (1972) and the African Liberation Monument

Across High Street from the Pegasus Hotel in Kingston stands the Umana Yana (a Wai-Wai phrase meaning "Meeting Place of the People"). Built in August 1972 as the VIP pavilion for the Conference of Foreign Ministers of Non-Aligned Countries, this 16.7-metre-high (55-foot) conical benab was erected by a team of 60 Wai-Wai Indigenous craftsmen from the deep southern Konashen rainforest using wallaba hardwood poles, manicole palm-leaf thatch, and forest mukru and turu vines, without a single metal nail. Declared a National Monument (and faithfully rebuilt by Wai-Wai artisans after a 2014 electrical fire), it stands beside the five polished greenheart spears of the 1974 African Liberation Monument.