Cuban architecture book - Great Houses of Havana - Hermes Mallea

Posted October 12, 2011 by publisher in Cuban Architecture

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Rob Sequin | Havana Journal

Great Houses of Havana - A Century of Cuban Style by Hermes Mallea is 272 glossy pages in a giant 10” x 12” format featuring 250 illustrations. It is priced at $75 and is one of those coffee table books that captures the essence of Cuban architecture with brilliant photography and wonderfully descriptive text.

From the press release

Great Houses of Havana celebrates one hundred years of creativity, design, and style that made the city the “Paris of the Caribbean.” For four hundred years, Havana was the center of Spanish trade in the western hemisphere. With the expansion of the sugar industry, independence from Spain, and North American investment, Havana became a city of great wealth, great style, and great houses in a style that was a unique amalgam of European, American, and Caribbean elements.

Cuba’s social history is woven throughout the book. Vintage photographs illustrate Havana’s sophisticated lifestyle—the masked balls, yacht club picnics, and the dynastic weddings of fashionable Cubans and their international guests. Popular cafés, hotels, theaters, and weekend resorts are also featured, creating a view of the privileged life inside the gated mansions of the city’s grandest neighborhoods.

Table of Contents

Havana in the Nineteenth Century

El Palacio y La Quinta de los Condes de Santovenia

Palacio Espiscopal of Havana

Palacio de los Capitanes Generales

Fashionable Neighborhoods: El Paseo del Prado and El Vedado

Casa de Jose Miguel Gomez

Casa de los Marqueses de Aviles

Casa de Pablo Gonzalez de Mendoza

La Casa del Vedado

Casa de Bernardo Solis

National Identity Through Public Works and Private Enterprise

Casa de Catalina Lasa y Juan de Pedro Baro

Casa de Mark A. Pollack y Carmen Casuso

Jamanitas, House of Jane and Grant Mason

Casa de Alfredo Hornedo

Influences of the 1930s: Art Deco Style, African Art, Cuban Heritage

Country Club Mansions

The United States Ambassador’s Residence

The Havana Tourists Never Saw

Finca Vigia, House of Ernest Hemingway

Palacio de la Condesa de Revilla de Camargo

Cuban Modernism

Casa de Rita Longa

House of Harriet and Alfred von Schulthess

Casa de Isabel y Olga Perez Farfante

As you can see by the Table of Contents, there are many houses and many different styles of architecture featured in this book that will be a valuable asset to your collection.

More about the book and author

This book is available for pre-ordering available on November 8, 2011 by Monacelli Press.

Hermes Mallea is a partner in M(Group), an interior design firm based in New York. He is a member of a distinguished Cuban-American family with multi-generational friendships throughout the social milieu of Havana.

The publisher was kind enough to send us a copy of this book but this is not a paid advertisement. The Havana Journal is happy to inform our readers about this opportunity.