Study Tour Fellow Reports

Today took east out of Havana to the towns of Matanzas and Varadero. To leave the city we passed through the Tunnel, completed in the 1950s under the Batista government. As we made our way along the Via Blanca (White Road) we soon came to Habana del Este (East Havana), a huge social housing project built in the early years of the Revolution. The Batista government had been developing the area of land for luxury apartments, and SOM had drawn up designs for these. However, after the new Revolutionary government took over in 1959, this project was reconceived to meet the demands for housing for the average person. Designed and built in under three years (1959-1961), the master plan by Hugo D’Acosta divides the housing into seven sectors, each with its own facilities and outdoor areas. These sectors share one centrally located town square that includes schools, a clinic, and commercial and administrative areas. Habana del Este is anything but a boring social housing project, in fact, as one of the three “Proyectos Grandes” (grand projects) of the early years of the Revolution, it displays an attention to thoughtfully employing modernism on a grand scale for housing. The housing structures range in height and design, as they were conceived by ten different architects, though their variety does not prevent them from existing harmoniously next to one another.

As we traveled east towards Matanzas the landscape changed. We crossed over hills with steep ravines and the vegetation was lush and green.

Matanzas, a port city, became an especially important urban area in the nineteenth century, when a large portion of the island’s sugar was going in and out of this city.

We moved on the Plaza de la Libertad, which was once the Plaza de Armas. After another rousing exegesis of the Laws of the Indies by SAH Board Representative Ken Breisch (we never did find a plaza that adhered to all of the points in the Laws), we visited La Botica Francesa, which now houses the Museo Farmaceutico (Pharmacy Museum). Purpose-built by a French pharmacist named Triolet, the structure houses a wonderful collection of items related to pharmacies and medicine, including ampoules full of strangely colored medicines and beautifully painted ceramic jars for storing and displaying herbs and medicines. The pharmacy stayed in the Triolet family until the son of the original owner turned it over to the government in 1964 to be run as a museum, which he was in charge of until his death in 1979.

After Matanzas we drove on to Varadero, a beach resort town on a spit of land that boomed in the post-World War II period. We visited the Dupont Mansion, where we enjoyed a lunch overlooking the ocean. The Dupont Mansion was commissioned by Irenée Dupont, who had bought a large amount of land in Varadero, which he subdivided to sell to other wealthy Americans. Completed in 1926, the house is beautifully constructed, including a top floor mirador, or lookout, that has a wonderful colonial-style wooden ceiling. It is now a hotel (though with very few rooms) with a restaurant.

The icon of the postwar boom in Varadero is the Hotel Varadero Internacional (1949-1950). Designed by Havana-based firm Mira and Rosich (architects of the Edificio Lopez Serrano), the Internacional is a sleek example of International Style modernism with accents of Streamline Moderne that hugs the sandy beaches. Unfortunately the hotel, which currently functions as an all-inclusive resort, is slated for demolition in 2015.



Adjacent to the Hotel Varadero Internacional is a community of little beach villas referred to as the Cabañas del Sol (Sun Cabins) designed by Nicolás Quintana. We would soon learn that this architect is often referred to as “Quintana el Bueno” (Quintana the Good) as opposed to another architect named Antonio Quintana, though many of us on the trip admired the architecture of both. These tiny villas came in a variety of forms, containing anywhere from one to three bedrooms. While we were wandering through this area some members of the group struck up a conversation with a woman who stilled lived in one the cabins. She was kind enough to invite us all in so we could see the interior of one of these buildings, which she have lovingly kept in great condition. Like the hotel, these cabins are slated for demolition as well, and the area that contains the Hotel Varadero Internacional and the Cabañas del Sol will be re-developed into a large-scale resort.

Our final stop in Varadero impressed upon me the strong ties between Cuba and the Soviet Union and the hopes that were bound in the earlier years of space travel. We visited the Casa de los Cosmonautos (House of the Cosmonauts), a small hotel built on the beach in 1975 that was meant to serve as a place where Russian cosmonauts could come and relax after their missions in space. Although developed for a very small segment of the Russian population, this hotel did make me think about Russian-Cuban relations, and how they compared to previous U.S.-Cuban relations. Was the notion of Cuba as a playground for Americans, a reputation that Castro fought to squash with the Revolution, simply replaced with a similar a relationship in which Russians viewed Cuba as their tropical paradise to enjoy as they saw fit? While certainly these complex international relationships can’t be reduced to solely the issue of beaches, it does raise questions about Cuba’s long struggle with foreign interest and influence.

Today we were treated to a day of Havana Modernism led by Cuban architect and historian Eduardo Luis Rodriguez. The author of numerous books on 20^th century Cuban architecture, Eduardo Luis also curated Architecture and Revolution in Cuba, 1959-1969 at the Storefront for Art and Architecture in New York in 2004. We met up with Eduardo at the Colegio de Arquitectos (Institute of Architects, 1944-1947) at the corner of Humboldt and Infanta streets. Infanta is the broad street that delineates Centro Havana from Vedado. Eduardo Luis sees this building as one of the turning points toward modernism in Cuba. The current building replaced a neoclassical structure that used to stand on the same spot. To the left of the building is a later addition, the College of Architects’ Rental Office Building (1953-1956). This Miesian-inspired building is evidence of the Cuban architecture community’s participation in practices of international modernism, though the architects unfortunately did not consider the climate when incorporating a large façade of unshaded glazing in the design. Likewise, Eduardo Luis pointed out an apartment complex across the street done by the same architect who did the Bacardí building. Gone is the Art Deco emphasis on decoration in favor of a more streamlined design focused on rationalism.

From this point we made our way up La Rampa (The Ramp), the nickname for an area of 23^rd Street from its origin point at the Malecón up a number of blocks toward the center of Vedado. This section of the city is testament to the city’s commitment to modernism after World War II. We stopped first at the Seguro Médico (Medical Insurance) building (1956-1958), which now houses offices of the Ministry of Health. Designed by the firm Quintana, Rubio y Pérez Beato, the building won a Gold Medal from the Institute of Architects. We were lucky to be granted access to the two entry lobbies of the building, one that leads to the tower of apartments above, and the other that leads to the base area composed of offices. The architectural composition of the building, a tower-on-podium parti, is similar to SOM’s Lever House in New York. In the lobby to the apartments we saw Boomerang by Mariano Rodriguez, a mosaic mural that references the coming and going of the building’s inhabitants. The other lobby contains a mosaic mural by Wifredo Lam.

We traveled up along La Rampa, enjoying a view of Juan Campos’s Pabellon Cuba (Cuba Pavilion), which was built in 1963 to house an international congress of architects, as well as terrazzo decorations incorporated in the sidewalk that were designed by a number of Cuban artists for the same congress. A number of us followed Eduardo Luis up a staircase at the Hotel Habana Libre (formerly Havana Hilton, 1958 by Welton Becket and Associates with Nicolás Arroyo and Gabriela Menéndez), we found ourselves on a sidewalk in the sky. An interesting proposition of urban design, mirrored on the other side of the street, this section of La Rampa has a street level sidewalk and an elevated sidewalk, creating twice the walking space and twice the retail opportunities.



We moved on, passing through the block that contains Coppelia (1966), an amazing example of Revolutionary architecture for the people. The Revolutionary government inherited a cleared city block here, and they took this valuable space and devoted it to an ice cream parlor that can seat more than 1000 people. In more prosperous times Coppelia offered more than 30 different flavors, and although the selection is much smaller now, Cubans can still enjoy a trip to Coppelia for only a few pesos.

After boarding the bus, we headed to Plaza de la Revolución, where we had a few minutes to walk the giant paved central plaza to take photos. The plaza was conceived in the Republican period under J.C.N. Forestier in 1925 as a civic square to be landscaped and filled with vegetation and benches in the center area and surrounded by government buildings. The project faced many difficulties and it wasn’t until the 1950s that the famous Monument to José Martí was built, the design of which is a hybrid of two designs submitted in competitions for the monument. In 1959 the Revolutionary government started using the square as a gathering place, one of the reasons why it was never landscaped.

The afternoon was filled with a number of visits to mid-century houses, some of which we could only view from the bus. One of the houses we visited was the Residence of Isabel and Olga Pérez Farfante. Any early work by Frank Martinez, Eduardo Luis told us how Martinez used to drive through Cerro, a neighborhood full of neoclassical buildings, as he worked to develop his personal style. Thus, the center area that connects the two apartments can be seen as a reinterpretation of the interior courtyard of Cuban colonial houses.

A highlight for many was the House of Alfred Schulthess (1956), designed by Richard Neutra with associated architects Raúl Alvarez and Enrique Gutiérez. Built for a Swiss banker, it is now the home of the Swiss Ambassador to Cuba. We passed under the spider-leg covered walkway (originally rendered in wood to complement the wood elements of the façade), and enjoyed an interior visit. We had time to walk through the gardens, which were designed by Brazilian landscape architect Roberto Burle Marx.