This building was completed in 1910 by the firm of Taylor and Gillies at a cost of £15,700. It was named "Hayes Court" after the saintly and gifted Bishop Thomas Hayes, who was the second Bishop of the Anglican Diocese of Trinidad and Tobago. Bishop Hayes served from 1889, and died in 1904 in England while preparing to return to the Diocese.
It was the same year of his death that the plan to build a residence for the Anglican Bishop was conceived by one Mr. Prothero. The street on which the Bishop's residence stands was also named after Bishop Hayes.
Hayes Court's first occupant was the third Bishop of Trinidad, the Right Reverend John Francis Welsh. The only Bishop who did not live for any length of time at Hayes Court was Bishop Arthur Anstey, who came to Trinidad in 1918. He was interested in, and dedicated to the education of the citizens of Trinidad and Tobago.
Soon after his arrival in the country, Bishop Anstey moved out of Hayes Court and lived at the YMCA at Park Street. He rented the former to the French Consul in order to provide additional funds for Church schools in both Trinidad and Tobago.
In 1921 he founded one of the most prestigious girls' high schools in the West Indies, the Bishop Anstey High School in Port of Spain, Trinidad.
Architecturally, Hayes Court reflects a combination of the quiet graciousness of the French and English country house design, with its high ceilings, mahogany staircase, wrought-iron fretwork, and wood panelling.
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