CUBA CULTURE SECTION - Havana Journal > Architecture & Housing
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El Nuevo Herald Staff
All but uncared for four decades since Fidel Castro came to power, the 137-year-old Cristóbal Colón Cemetery of Havana is facing one of the most difficult challenges in its history: the indignity of old age.
Through much hardship, the burial ground has managed to continue operating with more than 50 burials a day, though it is badly in need of repair.
Since 2007, cremations have been carried out in the Guanabacoa municipality, just outside the capital for about 350 Cuban pesos, or $84.
On this May morning, a refreshing breeze blows through the Cuban capital, lifting…
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By Ray Sanchez | South Florida Sun-Sentinel
(original title: Family feels entitled to someone else’s vault in Cuba’s Colon Cemetery)
Even in socialist Cuba, eternal rest has a high price.
The potential sale of a 10-by-14-foot granite and marble vault at historic Colon Cemetery speaks to the hardscrabble way of life on the island, the long and painful legacy of family separation and the determination of many Cubans to improve their lives by whatever means necessary.
The vault’s title is in the name of a frail but lucid 87-year-old woman named Constance, who has been in the care of a…
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BY JUAN CARLOS CHAVEZ | El Nuevo Herald
Max E. Borges, the creator and icon of Cuba’s most famous mid-20th century nightclub, the Tropicana, died Sunday at his home in Falls Church, Va. He was 90.
Borges was also known for having been a proponent of one of the island’s boldest urban architectural movements.
Born July 24, 1918, in Havana, Borges was brought up in a wealthy home and displayed from an early age a tireless curiosity of forms and the surrounding beauty, following the path of his father, architect Max Borges del Junco.
Borges studied architecture at Georgia Tech,…
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(Original title: Hurricanes worsen housing deficit in Cuba)
Frances Robles and Miami Herald staff | Miami Herald
The wooden one-room shack where Humberto Díaz lived in central Cuba is technically still standing, but the planks that made up its roof snapped into multiple pieces when Hurricane Ike sent a palm tree crashing through.
He spent a recent afternoon scrounging materials off the floor to use in rebuilding, and hopes to buy shingles at about $4 apiece. Díaz doubts the Cuban government help will come in time: Too many people are waiting.
’‘The last time a storm damaged my house,…
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TimesOnline.co.uk
Lin Arroyo designed some of the spectacular buildings that provided the stylish backdrop for the movie stars and gangsters who frequented 1950s Havana. His Modernist landmarks, such as the Havana Hilton Hotel, the Sports Palace arena and the National Theatre, stark structures shorn of ornamentation, stood out in a city with a homogeneous architecture of Neo-Classical colonial buildings.
Arroyo also reshaped Havana in his capacity as Public Works Minister in the Government of Fulgencio Batista who had seized power in a military coup in 1952. In public office Arroyo founded the Junta de Planificación,…
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Weary Cubans still displaced by past hurricanes
By WILL WEISSERT / AP
When Hurricane Charlie tore through her apartment, Marcia Escalona considered herself lucky to land temporary housing on the Cuban capital’s remote outskirts while communist authorities pledged to help her rebuild.
But four years later, it no longer feels temporary.
“They told me it would be six months, but that was in 2004, and I want out of here already,” said the 48-year-old kindergarten supervisor who lives with her husband and 22-year-old son in two rooms with concrete walls and a leaky roof in Bahia, a community of temporary…
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A letter from a Canadian living in Cuba
Hola all:
Cuba has been, and continues to be, devastated by Hurricane Ike.
The only thing, and without question the most important thing, that hasn’t been devastated is the will and determination of the Cuban people to surpass this disaster and go forward.
There’s lots of information circulating in the international press about the extent of damages. But there are perhaps a few things that haven’t, and it’s these I want to briefly mention to give you an idea of the extent of damages.
There’s not one province that has gotten off…
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By Ray Sanchez | Havana Bureau | Sun Sentinel
Ike’s true fury may only be starting to show.
From the water-logged eastern provinces, where mudslides and rising waters kept hundreds of thousands of evacuees away from their homes, to the dilapidated tenements disintegrating in its wake, the fierce hurricane continued to punish Cuba long after it churned away into the distance.
Cuba’s official media Wednesday night reported 67 building collapses in this densely populated capital — 60 partially ruined, and seven destroyed — brought down by a combination of age, decay, neglect and Hurricane Ike’s torrential downpours and winds.
Just…
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By WILFREDO CANCIO ISLA | El Nuevo Herald
Architect Nicolás “Lin” Arroyo, who played a leading role in pre-Castro Cuba’s modernist architecture and planning movement, has died, his family said. He was 90.
Arroyo died in Washington, D.C., from heart complications on July 13, just three days after the death of his wife and working partner of more than 60 years, architect Gabriela Menéndez y Garcia Beltrán, relatives said.
The couple met as architecture students at the University of Havana, and after marrying in 1942 started the firm Arroyo & Menéndez, which designed several iconic modernist buildings of 1950s Havana—including…
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DTCuba.com
The eighth edition of the Routes and Travels project (Rutas y Andares in Spanish), promoted by the Office of the City Historian in Havana, will take place this summer.
The project includes the Route to Independence, which will provide knowledge of the symbols and heroes who participated in Cuba’s wars of independence.
The Route will consist of visits to the City Museum, the Palace of Government and the Numismatic Museum.
It also includes visits to different places in Old Havana to learn about the area’s architectural peculiarities and cultural diversity.
Other activities are the Route of Science, the Ethnographic…
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