Black Star Line

The Black Star Line is a tall, wooden, sea-green building on the corner of Avenida 5 and Calle 6, built in the 1920s as the local hall of Marcus Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA). The name comes from the steamship line Garvey founded to connect the African diaspora through commerce. The building is one of the few survivors of Limón's heyday as a Caribbean port town with deep Afro-Jamaican roots.

It has served different functions over the years — community centre, theatre, restaurant — and is occasionally closed between uses. Even from the outside it is worth a look for the Caribbean architecture: wooden boards, a steep tin roof, and the kind of upper-floor verandah that has all but disappeared from the rest of the country.

things to do sight
A story
Marcus Garvey himself visited Limón in 1921 to address the West Indian community here — many of them Jamaican migrants who had come to build the Atlantic Railway and stayed on to work the United Fruit Company's banana plantations.

Other places in Things to Do