Mexico City Ambles

Saturday, July 18, 2015

Colonia Benito Juárez: Where History Lives in the Shadows

The historic character of Colonia Benito Juárez is overshadowed by the physical and social energy of two attention-grabbing, more recent developments. Along its northern boundary, the post-modern, glass-faced skyscrapers of the Paseo de la Refoma loom over the mostly two-story buildings of its core. And taking over its mid-section, centered around Calle Génova, is the popular "Zona Rosa", the "Pink Zone", with its mix of up-scale and fast-food restaurants, bars, tourist-oriented shops, hostels and hotels, and the predominately young crowd that frequents them.

Reforma skyscrapers
loom over Colonia Benito Juárez

Génova Street, a pedestrian walkway
lined with fast-food restaurants, cuts across the middle of the colonia
The clipped shrubs spell out "Zona Rosa".

But if you walk the streets to the east and west of Genova, along Londres, Hamburgo and Liverpool, and the small cross-streets such as Praga, and look past the distractions of commercial uses, you will discover another early twentieth century, European-style neighborhood that originated during the Porfiriato, the thirty-year reign of Porfirio Díaz, and continued to flourish after the Mexican Revolution.

The neighborhood that was to become Colonia Juárez was conceived in the 1870s when Rafael Martinez de la Torre, lawyer, politician and defender of Emperor Maximilian, sought to develop an area west of the Centro Histórico known as the Hacienda de la Teja. It had been divided by Emperor Maximilian in the 1860's when he had the Paseo de la Reforma built to connect his chosen residence, the Castle of Chapultepec, with the Centro Histórico. While its subdivison into two colonias was planned in 1876, due to the death of Martinez de la Torre, this did not move forward. In 1882, Salvador Malo acquired the rights.

Hacienda land growing agave plants to produce pulque, beer.
Chapultepec Castle stands on hill to rear
Photo taken about 1875
found on La Ciudad de México en el tiempo
The City of Mexico Through Time

However, it was not until 1898 that the colonia was officially opened, but only a few homes were built. In 1904 its development was taken over by the Mexico City Improvement Company, later called The Chapultepec Land Company, owned by U.S. businessmen who originally called it Colonia Americana. However, on the birthday anniversary of Benito Juárez, March 21, 1906, the city government decided to officially name it Colonia Juárez.

Neo-classic and Neo-colonial, side by side

Quintessential French Second Empire mansion

French Second Empire

California colonial of the 1920's and 30's

Neo-classic mansion

More modern, possibly 1930's version of Neo-classic

Second French Empire, now a bank

Post-modernity...

...towers above
the Neo-classic

And in between the classic and the post-modern, some late twentieth century modern:

Somehow, much in the character of Mexico City, todo convive, it all lives together.

Colonia Benito Juárez is pie-shaped,
Bounded on the north by Paseo de la Reforma
on the east by Bucarelli
on the south by Chapultepec Ave.
and on the west by Chapultepec Woods.
Insurgentes Ave. cuts across it.
CLICK to enlarge

Other Posts on the Porfiriato Era

Delegación Cuauhtémoc

The "Porfirian" colonias line the west side of Delegación Cuauhtémoc
From north to south they are:
Santa Maria la Ribera (violet)
San Rafael (medium pink)
Cuauhtémoc, (medium blue triangle)

South of Paseo de la Reforma
Benito Juárez (horizontal triangle of three adjacent pink sections)
Roma Norte (light blue) (Doctores, to the east, is a separate colonia)
Roma Sur (darker blue)

And to the southwest (lower left):
Condesa (medium pink)
Condesa Hípódromo (dark pink)
Hípódromo (pale pink)

Centro, and its five sub-divisions (Historico, north, east, south, west)
is to the right center (almost white)

Sunday, July 12, 2015

Colonia San Rafael: Decay, Renewal and Restoration

The buildings and neighborhoods of a city are the physical manifestations of the historical, social and economic realites of a society or nation. Hence, they reflect its ongoing cycles of growth, decline and renewal; creation, destruction and reconstruction; living, dying and rebirth.

In Mexico City this universal fluctuation between vitality and decay is more evident and more precariously balanced than, perhaps, it is in other places. We have seen this dynamic manifested in the Centro Histórico, where today's shopowners and street vendors hustle to make a living amidst the faded grandeur of Spanish colonial palaces, and we touched on it in México Agridulce, Bittersweet Mexico.

For some fifty years (1821-1875) after the War for Independence, which itself dragged on for eleven years (1810-1821), the potential leaders of the new nation were embroiled in political power struggles, battling foreign invaders or one another in civil wars. El desorden cost lives and livelihood, preventing much population growth and economic development. Hence, there was little building in Mexico City; it remained confined to the original Spanish colonial core.

However, the economic stability of the Porfiriato—the thirty-some-year dictatorial reign of Porfirio Díaz from 1876 to 1911, with its opening to foreign businesses and the growth of domestic business—triggered pressures to expand the boundaries of the city and provide new residential neighborhoods for the nouveau riche outside the original city boundaries of the Spanish colonial Centro Histórico.

Thus, colonias such as Santa María la Ribera, San Rafael, Roma and Condesa were built as planned subdivisions of hacienda farmlands on the drained bed of Lake Texcoco between the Centro Histórico and the Lake's western shore, in what is now Delegación Cuauhtémoc. The area east of the Centro Histórico remained wetlands and remnants of the lake. Since Aztec time, it had been the site of canals and landings for canoes and boats supplying the city; hence, it was an early commercial center. The later expansion into the eastern lake bed was likewise commercial.

The original large homes built in the new colonias were in French Second Empire, Spanish neo-colonial and neo-classical styles popular in the latter part of the 19th century. By imitating the life-style and fashions of their Western European counterparts, they represented the wealth of the new business class, the bourgeoisie.

San Rafael, immediately south of Santa María la Ribera, perhaps best portrays the cycles of growth, decay and rebirth that have characterized Mexico City through the 20th century into the 21st. Its roots lie in Aztec and Spanish colonial times. Part of the area was a small island of fishermen, across which the Aztecs built a causeway from Tenochtitlán to Lake Texcoco's western shore and the city-states of Tlalcopan (now Tacuba) and Azcapotzalco. The Spanish, of course, made their mark by building a church, which still stands.

Church of San Cosme and Damián
Click on any photo to enlarge it,
A gallery of all the photos will appear below it.

The Euopean style homes built at the end of the Porfiriato and those built—curiously, in the same styles—after the Mexican Revolution (1910-1917), are now in various states of disrepair and repair, ranging from abandonment to total restoration into upscale private homes and condominiums.

Block of abandoned Second French Empire style buildings

Neo-colonial style former hospital
being converted into condominiums

Restored Second French Empire style apartment building

"Privadas": Townhouse style apartment buildings
restored into condominiums

These late 19th and early 20th century buildings are surrounded by others ranging across the 20th century to the 21st, from Art Deco to post-modern glass boxes.

Abandoned 1930's Art Deco movie theater

Early 20th Century school building, across the street from.....

...post-modern corporate headquarters of major newspaper and magazine publisher

1930's California colonial apartments ...

...next to postmodern glass box.

1980's modern apartments

Restored turn of the 19th-20th century apartments.

Renewal and restoration are both revitalizing, but which is your preference? I know mine.

Colonia San Rafael is a planned square,

bounded on the north by Ribera San Cosme (the route of the Aztec causeway),

on the west by the Circuito Interior (Inner Ring Highway),

on the south by James Sullivan Street, with a small greensward,

on the east by Insurgentes Ave.

Paseo de la Reforma touches its southeast corner.

Other Posts on the Porfiriato Era

Delegación Cuauhtémoc

Sunday, July 5, 2015

Colonia Santa María la Ribera: Early 20th Century Century Potpourri

Colonia Santa María la Ribera (St. Mary of the Shore) is a neighborhood located in the Delegación Cuauhtémoc (borough) of Mexico City, west of the Centro Historico. It lies north of the main avenue Ribera San Cosme, which follows the path of the Aztec causeway that originally connected Tenochtitlán with the western shore of Lake Texcoco. It sits on the former lake bed; hence the name, Ribera (shoreline).

It reminds me of a mixture of Greenwich Village and the Lower East Side in the 1960s, the Left Bank of Paris, and my grandparent's Victorian house, along with a touch of World's Fair.

French Second Empire-style homes,
with characteristic mansard roofs..
All Photos: JRB
click on any photo to enlarge it;
a gallery of all photos will appear below it.

The neighborhood was created during the Porfiriato, the rule of Porfirio Díaz, at the end of the 19th century for the affluent who wanted homes outside of the then city limits. The architecture of its oldest homes reflects that era's love of everything European, and especially French.

Restored neo-colonial style home,
now condo apartments.

Neo-classic building,
now apartments

The colonia reached its height between 1910 and 1930.

Cerrada Chopo-Pino, Poplar-Pine Alley,
a delightful block of two-story town houses.
Could be Greenwhich Village or Brooklyn Heights

After the Mexican Revolution, in the 1930s, new residents moved in and another era of construction began.

California colonial,
distinguished by decoration around the door,
round arch windows and spiral pillars
Style imported from California in the 1930's.

The colonia began to deteriorate in the 1950s, as the city grew rapidly around it and low-income apartment buildings were constructed.

Post WW II apartment building

Today, la colonia es una mezcla, is a mixture of old mansions and homes—over 1,000 categorized as having architectural or historic value—, small shops and businesses, tenements, abandoned buildings and new apartments. As a whole, the neighborhood conveys a complex, sometimes deteriorated past, but it also conveys the vitality of revival, reuse and regeneration that is typically Mexican.

¨"Juices"

Wall with window and door. That's all that's left.

Work-in-progress, maybe

Like a jewel and oasis, at the center of the colonia lies the Alameda de Santa María la Ribera, a park which features, believe it or not, a Moorish pavilion at its center.

Moorish Pavilion

The Moorish Kiosk or Pavilion, built of wrought iron, was the Mexico Pavilion for the 1884 New Orleans World Cotton Centennial and then the Louisiana Purchase Exposition (aka St. Louis World's Fair) in 1904.

Mexican Pavilion at the World Cotton Centennial
Wikipedia

Returned to Mexico, it was first installed in the Alameda Central park. but then moved to Santa María la Ribera when Porfirio Díaz had the Hemiciclo to Benito Juárez monument built for the 1910 commemoration of Mexican Independence.

With its circles of thin pillars holding the mass of its intricately carved walls suspended above, and a delicate net of light falling from its glass cupola, it is a wonderfully fanciful space that carries the visitor's imagination to some distant, past world.

But why something Moorish to represent Mexico to the world—or at least to its progressively oriented neighbor to the north? A mystery, but the Spanish brought many Moorish esthetics to Nueva España. Also, Moorish Revival architecture was the fashion in Europe and North America at the turn of the 19th to 20th century.

On the west side of the Alameda stands a completely different esthetic. The Geology Institute was built at the direction of President Díaz as one of the many projects to celebrate the 100th Anniversary in 1910 of the beginnng of the Mexican War of Idependence. Like the Palacio de Comunicaciones in Centro Historico, it is neo-classic, but on a much smaller scale.

Entering, you encounter one of those soaring, wrought iron, double staircases, like those in the Palacio de Correos and the Palacio de Comunicaciones, that Díaz, or his architects, apparently loved so much. Rather than the dramatic angles of the staircase in the Correos, this one is all flowing curves.

Passing under the staircase, you enter the center hall, dominated by a fossilized American mastodon. Very 19th century wooden cabinets line the walls, displaying various minerals.

At the far end of the room, a curious stained glass window portrays the Wieliczka Salt Mine in Poland. Why a Polish salt mine in Mexico? Another mystery yet to be solved.

The Wieliczka Salt Mine functioned for over 700 years,
from the 13th century to the 21st.

Detail: Love the horse, and the cobalt blue boots!

As if Moorish Revival next to Neo-classic weren't enough of a contrast, a few blocks southeast of the Alameda is another building from the same turn of the century era, but with a completely different esthetic.

The Museo Chopo is an art nouveau structure whose esthetic combines fantasy with turn of the century, cutting-edge steel and glass technology. A kind of cathedral to technology, it was built in 1902 in Germany for an industrial exposition. At the end of the exposition, a Mexican company bought it, hoping to display industrial machinery and erected it on Calle Chopo [Poplar St.] in Santa María la Ribera. Those plans didn't work out, so it became the Natural History Museum. Neglected, it was closed in 1964 and nearly dismantled.

Fortunately, in the 1970's, a new Law of Artistic and Historic Monuments required that it be protected. In 1977, it was reopened as the Chopo Museum, operated by the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). Completely renovated again in 2009, the museum hosts cutting-edge contemporary art exhibits. When we visited, Gay Art was the featured exhibit.

So all in all, and in its own unique way, Santa María la Ribera, is very Mexico City in its mezcla of architectural styles, from Neo-colonial and Neo-classic to French Empire, Moorish Revival, Art Nouveau and California Colonial, as well more modern interlopers. Es un popurrí, una mezcolanza, un batiburrillo mexicano. Una fiesta arquitectónica.

Santa Maria la Ribera is bounded on
the north by Avenue Ricardo Flores Magon,
the east by Insurgentes Ave.,
the south by Ribera San Cosme,
the west by Circuito Interior,

Other Posts on the Porfiriato Era

Delegación Cuauhtémoc