1913, August – 1914, January 1: (The Palace That Oreste Would Never See: The Design Contest and Pyke’s Weary Verdict): The palace was an interim structure — …

1913, August – 1914, January 1: (The Palace That Oreste Would Never See: The Design Contest and Pyke’s Weary Verdict): The palace was an interim structure — Auguste had done nothing to rebuild the Leconte ruin. Oreste extracted a $350,000 appropriation from the legislature in August 1913, after holding a contest in which the design of Georges Baussan, Haiti’s leading architect, edged out French and domestic competitors. Work commenced on May 20, 1914, an event Michel Oreste was not destined to see. As 1913 drifted to its close, British Minister Pyke wearily told the Foreign Office some truths in his annual report: there had been no change except retrogressive, the proverbial apathy of the peasants — who were accustomed to suffer so much from their rulers, from the highest to the lowest — had probably prevented a repetition of the sanguinary revolutions of the last century, but it was the inherent distrust and dislike with which all Haitians regarded the foreigner that formed a continued obstacle to development, without which the country would soon reach a state of bankruptcy, while procrastination and double-dealing continued to be the characteristics of Haiti’s diplomacy. On January 1, 1914, there was an outburst at Thomazeau timed to coincide with an attempt — for once unsuccessful — to set Port-au-Prince afire. Government troops, rushed out in cane cars behind the balloon-stacked little wood burners of the P.C.S. Railroad, surrounded Thomazeau, captured nineteen rebels and one general, and shot them on the spot.