CUBA CULTURE SECTION - Havana Journal > Architecture & Housing
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Email from a Havana Journal reader, posted with permission.
I saw your posting showing the memorial of the Maine in NYC and it reminded me of a beautiful statue I saw in Havana just this year.
As a Cuban-American I am delighted when I unexpectedly come across signs of Cuba in this country, for instance the statue of Marti in the Parque de Marti in Tampa, Florida.
Well I was even more delighted when driving up Avenida de los Presidentes in Havana and passing by a statue of Lincoln in front of a house…
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Marc Lacey | New York Times
Virtually every square foot of this capital city is owned by the socialist state, which would seem sure to put a damper on the buying and selling of property.
Cubans interested in finding new homes gather every Saturday on one of Havana’s grand boulevards to swap information.
But the people of Havana, it turns out, are as obsessed with real estate as, say, condo-crazy New Yorkers, and have similar dreams of more elbow room, not to mention the desire for hot water, their own toilets and roofs that…
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By Javier Rodríguez | Prensa Latina
Eusebio Leal, Havana’s City Historian, emotionally received the news here that he has been awarded an Ibero-American prize for the restoration of Old Havana.
Leal was notified of the honor during a tribute yesterday at the Casa Lamm cultural center, where a documentary by Mexican Alejandra Ochoa was shown along with an exhibition of photographs by Spaniard Silvia Martínez dedicated to Leal’s life and work.
Speaking to Prensa Latina, Leal said it was very important that the jury of the Queen Sofía of Spain Prize voted unanimously in…
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By Anthony Boadle | Reuters
Rich Canadian widow cash-strapped in Cuba
Canadian Mary McCarthy lives in the same mansion she and her millionaire husband moved into 62 years ago in the once-posh Country Club area of Havana.
Peacocks still strut the one-acre garden under royal palm trees, but the lawn is overgrown and the house filled with Napoleon III furniture, chandeliers and a Steinway grand piano is falling apart.
At the age of 107, McCarthy is wheelchair-bound, but still dresses up for visitors in a satin dress, silk blouse and chiffon scarf,…
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In Cuba, it often takes cash to swap homes
Ray Sanchez | Sun Sentinel
Havana For two weeks, Elizabeth Miller has been walking from her run-down apartment to the unofficial housing swap along the capital’s majestic Prado boulevard.
“In Cuba, you can’t just pick up and move,” she said. “Here you die where you lived all your life, even if you have problems with your next-door neighbor.”
Miller’s problem, she said, is her teenaged daughter’s boyfriend, who lives a few doors from her crumbling Old Havana tenement.
“He threatened to…
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In 1960, Nicolas Quintana was a prominent Havana architect, a member of Cuba’s national planning board. When Castro came to power, Quintana left for what he thought would be a few months. He has been in exile ever since. Now, from his post at Florida International University, Quintana, 81, is developing an ambitious plan to rebuild and restore Old Havana. This is not just the nostalgic musings of an old man. It is a project funded by two homebuilders--Lennar and Century. And there are indications the Cuban authorities are not only aware of…
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By Anthony Boadle | Reuters
Almost half a century of communist rule has saved Havana’s eclectic architecture from the urban developer’s bulldozer, but a lack of repair has taken a ruinous toll on its neo-Baroque and Art Deco gems.
Dozens of colonial buildings and beautiful squares in Old Havana have been restored since the U.N. cultural agency
UNESCO designated it a world heritage site in 1982. But the rest of the city of 2.2 million people is falling into decay.
“The situation has become critical. There are areas of the city where…
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BY MATTHEW HAGGMAN | Miami Herald
Architect Nicolas Quintana has long feared that when Cuba opens up to free-market forces, the first thing to go will be Havana’s urban character. He worries that unchecked development could overwhelm the nearly 488-year-old city with unsuitable and out-of-scale construction.
The worst could happen if Havana isn’t prepared to handle the building intensity a market-oriented economy might create, says Quintana, a professor at Florida International University who served on Cuba’s National Planning Board in the 1950s.
So for the past 2 ½ years Quintana has partnered with two…
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BY GARY MARX | Chicago Tribune
Jose Santiago remembers the day in early 1960 when a young Che Guevara, dressed in fatigues and trademark black beret, came to his family’s new home for dinner.
Like many wealthy Havana residents, the Santiago family had recently moved into its dream home, designed by a hot young architect and featuring shiny terrazzo floors, geometric stained-glass windows, floor-to-ceiling shutters and a whimsical, wing-shaped roof.
Baccarat cognac glasses rested on a living room partition and outside, in the carport, sat the family’s 1959 Cadillac Fleetwood and two-toned Chevrolet Impala.…
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BY CASEY WOODS | Miami Herald
An international network of Art Deco design enthusiasts that has roots in Miami is grappling with another South Florida obsession: the bitter, seemingly endless, battle over how to deal with Cuba.
Members of the International Coalition of Art Deco Societies, a loose association of groups dedicated to preserving the streamlined architectural style, are locked in a battle over whether to hold the group’s 2007 World Congress on Art Deco in the island nation.
Those who support the notion say that politics shouldn’t thwart efforts to save the country’s…
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