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.
