Colonia Condesa and Its Sisters - From Past to Present, Part I: Transition to the 1920's

In our last post, Seeking Restored Vitality, we reviewed the colonias, neighborhoods, established at the end of the Porfiriato, at the turn of the 19th to the 20th century. Our focus was on the question of what made for the varying degrees of success we have observed in restoring their century-old, shared heritage of stylish homes and in integrating them with all the changes they underwent in that one hundred-plus years. 

Our answer was that two things seem to have made the difference. First is their proximity to the major axis of Paseo de la Reforma with its dynamic fusion of the Mexican version of a 19th century European boulevard and pedestrian promenade with the skyscrapers of the contemporary global economy. Second is their having "good bones," public streets and parks inviting people to walk, sit and enjoy what is around them. We concluded that, among the colonias we have explored, Colonia Roma Norte, with its relative proximity to Reforma and its "good bones," was most successful in this endeavor.

End of the Porfiriato, Transition to a New Epoch

With that perspective, following the (mostly) charming Álvaro Óbregon Avenue west from Roma Norte, we cross Insurgentes Avenue and begin our amble through the last of the Porfirian colonias, the one known as Condesa. Actually, the area is comprised of four colonias, or parts thereof:

• Condesa, 
• Condesa Hipódromo (Condesa Racetrack), 
• Hipódromo, and 
• One part of Roma Norte that—located on the west side of Insurgentes—is physically more connected to Condesa than to its eastern side.

Gathering this group into one neighborhood are the major thoroughfares that mark its boundaries on four sides:

• Chapúltepec Avenue to the north,
• Insurgentes to the east,
• Benjamin Franklin to the south, and 
• José Vasconcelos to the west. 

Chapúltepec Woods is just to the northwest. We refer to all of them as "Condesa."

CLICK to enlarge any photo.
A gallery of all photos will appear below it.

During the Colonial period, the land was a hacienda, a large estate, owned by a series of countesses, hence the name. The original mansion still stands on José Vasconcelos Avenue, in the southwest corner of Condesa Hipódromo. The U.S.S.R. Embassy throughout much of the 20th century, it is today the Russian Embassy surrounded by a high wall, which makes picture-taking a problem, even worse than the modern U.S. Embassy on Reforma.

In 1902, the owners decided to subdivide the hacienda into residential properties. The northern section was developed first as part of Roma. To the south, the Mexican Jockey Club opened a racetrack in 1910. In the 1920's, after the Revolution, it was closed, and the land was divided into residential lots.

Hipódromo of JockeyClub of Mexico as it was being converted into residential buildings in 1920s.
Larger, outer ring is Amsterdam Ave.
Photo: MXCity

The shape of the racetrack, however, was preserved, which accounts for the oval shape of Parque México and Amsterdam Avenue, which circles it, and for the name of that colonia, Hipódromo. We will find that this difference between pre- and post-Revolution origins in development of the colonias is reflected in their architecture.

The Two Hearts of Condesa

So let's begin with Condesa's "bones" and, extending the metaphor, its vital organs. Álvaro Óbregon leads us to a lovely, tranquil park virtually at the colonia's heart, Parque España.

Parque España 

From this serene core, wide spokes of tree-lined streets with shaded camellones, medians, spread out to the north, west and south.

Two short blocks to the southeast is Condesa's larger, and more active heart, Parque México. 

Art Deco clock points to the new architectural era in which the colonia developed

We will come back to Parque México, but first, let's stroll out some of the spokes, the "bones" radiating from Parque España.

The Bones of Condesa

Tuning north from where Avenida Álvaro Óbergon touches the park, we walk up Avenida Oaxaca. through what is actually part of Roma Norte.

Avenida Oaxaca is one of the few avenues in Mexico City with a row of palm trees

Along the way, we pass some old acquaintances:

Neocolonial home, now a restaurant

Amidst admittedly non-descript contemporary buildings, we have our first ecounter with a new, post-Revolution esthetic:

1930s-40s Art Deco

Oaxaca leads to a large traffic circle with a monumental statue at its center:

Fountain of Cibeles 

The Neoclassic Fountain of Cibeles [Anatolian earth goddess adopted by the Greeks and Romans] is an exact replica of one erected in Madrid, Spain, in the late 18th century. The copy, a gift of friendship from Spanish residents in Mexico City, but echoing the Colonial past, was installed here in 1980. The plaza around the statue was recently renovated and replanted with flowering plants.

Around the outside of the traffic circle are more Neocolonial and Neoclassic buildings. Housing cafes, restaurants and other shops preserve the Porfirian European ambience.

Continuing up Oaxaca to where it meets Insurgentes and Chapúltepec Avenues at the huge glorieta, traffic circle, we encounter other vestiges of the Porfiriato. They are, however, rather more down-on-their-luck than those around the Fountain of the Cibeles.

Second French Empire buildings on Insurgentes

Neoclassic mansion
(Sign indicates that current commercial tenant uses side entrance)

Reversing direction and heading back to the Cibeles Fountain, we angle southwest from Oaxaca and enter Calle [Street] Durango, the first of a chain of broad, shaded boulevards forming a semi-circle along the west side of Condesa, a kind of "ribcage" around the colonia's double hearts.

Camellón, pedestrian meridian down Calle Durango

And running north and south of Durango, on side streets named after Mexican cities such as Valladolid and Salamanca ...

...a quiet blend of tradition and definitely upscale, contemporary urban life.

Crossing Another Threshold

When Durango intersects with the wide Calle Veracruz, it bends more to the south and becomes Avenida Mazatlán. 

Neoclassic mansion at intersection of Durango, Veracruz and Tampico

Here we say goodbye to Roma Norte and enter Colonia Condesa proper.  We also find that we have crossed another threshhold, leaving behind the Neoclassic and Neocolonial of the earlier established La Roma for ...

                              

... that nostalgic, eclectic hybrid we have met in other Porfirian colonias, California Colonial, with its spiral columns and ornate dooways. The architecture tells us that we have entered a neighborhood established in the 1920's and 30's.

                                 

But then there appears a 1930's apartment building adopting formal Neoclassic elements. 

Followed by more 1920's fantasy:

Medieval mixed with California Colonial, and

Moorish Revival

        

As Mazatlán approaches the southern limit of Colonia Condesa at Avenida Michoacán, we find ouselves moving into an area of predominately utilitarian, unimaginative Post-World War II construction, where the ornamentations of pre-war fantasies are left behind.

Seeking to uncover more of the early 20th century "dreamed city" in Condesa, we turn northeast, up Michoacán, and walk towards its heart, Parque México, and our next post.

Other Posts on the Porfiriato Era

• The Porfiriato: French Culture Conquers Mexico City
• The Grandeza of Porfirio Díaz
• Inside Porfirio's Palace
• Centro Historico Porfiriato - Late Nineteenth Century Mexico City
• Colonia Santa María la Ribera: Early Twentieth Century Century Popurrí
• Colonia San Rafael: Decay, Renewal and Restoration
• Colonia Benito Juárez: Where History Lives in the Shadows
• Colonia Cuauhtémoc: The First Decades of the 20th Century Marry the First Decades of the 21st
• Colonia Roma Norte Part I: Houses—and a Culture—That Survived a Revolution
• Colonia Roma Norte - Part II: Dreams in Stone and Glass...and Paint
• Seeking Restored Vitality: Colonias of the Porfiriato Have Varying Success

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)

Seeking Restored Vitality: Colonias of the Porfiriato Have Varying Success

Perambulating through the various colonias, neighborhoods, initiated at the culmination of the Porfiriato epoch at the end of the 19th century, we have observed a process of architectural evolution that reflects the changes in Mexican upper-class values across the 20th century. In our last post, we revisited these changing "dreams of the city", or at least, dreams of what its prosperous enclaves should be.

In our walks, we have also seen—in well-worn, even abandoned buildings on one hand, and repurposed and restored ones on the other—how these once-imagined neighborhoods have experienced and now reflect the realities of a century of time, the impacts of economic ups and downs, with the resulting fluctuations in the income levels of their residents over the last century.

They share in common having a significant number of late 19th and early 20th century buildings in distinctive Euopean styles that give one the sense of being in some Continental city, but with tropical vegetation and plenty of sun. Thus, each colonia has the potential for, and manifests efforts to be restored, integrating its historic batiburrillo, hodgepodge, into a vital, architecturally rich, contemporary neighborhood.  However, they evidence different degrees of success in this process of rebirth and integration.

Seeking Renewed Life and Identity

Santa Maria la Ribera, the most northerly of the group, appears to be struggling with the greatest difficulty to restore the faded beauties of its Porfirian beginnings while integrating them with post-World War II Functionalist buildings and adding the modern buildings of urban renewal.

Partially rehabilitated Neoclassic building in Santa Maria la Ribera

San Rafael, the next colonia to the south along Insurgentes Avenue, seems further along in its resurgence and integration of styles. While there are still abandoned French Empire and Neocolonial buildings, others are restored into upscale condominiums that sit next to well maintained Post War Functionalist apartment buildings or across the street from contemporary, glass cube office buildings.

Both Cuauhtémoc and Benito Juárez, dominated as they inescapably are by the architectonic thrust of Paseo de la Reforma [Boulevard], seem to have found their individual equilibria in balancing contemporary vitality with restoration of and continuity with the past. Cuauhtémoc is more a quiet, yuppie neighborhood with a good number of California colonial homes mixed with modern apartment buildings. Sometimes, the two are literally married.

Modern Apartments Built Behind California Colonial in Cuauhtémoc

In Benito Juárez there is a dynamic, rhythmic counterpoint between Zona Rosa nightlife and quiet streets named Londres and Praha, with their Neoclassic, French and California colonial houses.   

Restaurant Occupies Neocolonial mansion in Benito Juárez

Roma Norte is probably the architectually richest of these colonias, with many well-preserved Neoclassic and Neocolonial mansions and some Second French Empire examples, To that are added the contrast of—and even combination with—the latest in glass and steel. All this is centered around Avenida Álvaro Obregon, with its enticing fusion of tranquil 19th century European promenade and bustling hip cafes. It appears to have "arrived" at a fairly well defined and vital identity that integrates its historic foundations with the contemporary style of upscale urban life.

Contemporay Glass Pavilion atop Neo-classic Base
in Roma Norte

What Makes Revival Possible? 

"Location, Location, Location"

Two factors basic to all real estate value seem to contribute to the varying levels of revival and achievement of a sense of integration across these colonias that share a common ancestry and similar raw materials. First, as they say in the real estate business, "location, location, location".

In this case, closeness to the economic and cultural power of Paseo de la Reforma is critical.

Paseo de la Reforma,
Where 19th Century Tradition and
 21st Century Globalism Meet

Insurgentes Avenue, the north-south axis connecting all the colonias, is less dramatic but increasingly potent economically, especially south of Reforma.

New Skyscraper Going Up
at Intersection of Insurgentes and Chapúltepec Aves,
where Colonias Benito Juárez and Roma Norte meet

Santa Maria la Ribera is far from Reforma and separated from its southern neighbors by Ribera San Cosme, a wide, heavily-trafficked commercial avenue catering to lower middle class and working class customers. San Rafael is south of San Cosme, closer to Reforma, and its southern end is now under "development". 

Cuauhtémoc's and Benito Juárez's more up-scale development is inextricably tied to their eje central, central axis, Reforma. While Roma Norte is farther south of the grand boulevard, it isn't far away, across narrow Benito Juárez and, like its northern neighbors, it is close to Chapultepec Woods, so it can feed from their attractions to add to its own potential.

"Good Bones"

The second factor that drives Roma Norte's attractiveness for restoration and development lies within itself. In addition to its large number of historic homes, it has Avenida Álvaro Obregon, with its spacious, shaded camellón, promenade, and the north-south axis of tree-lined Calle Orizaba, with plazas near each end.

Promenade on Álvaro Obregon

Plaza Río Janeiro near nothern end of Orizaba

             

Plaza Luis Cabrera near southern end of Orizaba

These two streets, which invite people to walk, sit and relax, establish the colonia's core "X" or "skeleton". As real estate agents say of an older, somewhat neglected but still solid house: "it has good bones." Around these communal bones of streets and plazas—and the many homes with "good bones" on or near them—the body of a vital neighborhood has been reborn.

In comparison, Santa Maria la Ribera has the spacious, tranquil Alameda Park at its center, with its Romantic Moorish Revival pavillion. But while this attracts people and has drawn, in turn, a few small cafes and triggered the restoration of some buildings around it, it has not developed enough weight to drive sustained renewal. The architectually interesting Neoclassic Geology Institute on one side of the Alameda has potential, but it seems under-used and semi-forgotten. It is no Casa Lamm or Casa del Libro.

Moorish Pavilion in the Alameda of Santa Maria la Ribera

San Rafael lacks any park or boulevard to serve as a center of attraction for people traffic and provide a core around which to build a sense of coherent identity, but its proximity to Reforma seems to transmit to it both commercial and residential vitality.

The Colonia That Has It All

So Roma Norte seems to "have it all" for attracting the people and money that produce restoration and renewed vitality: a large number of handsome historic buildings with "good bones", proximity to major urban axes, Reforma and Insurgentes, and, an internal "skeleton" of inviting public spaces for gathering and enjoying what the neighborhood has to offer: a revitalized and reimagined "dream of the city".

Modern Art "dreams"
in the Courtyard of Casa Lamm

                 

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 with three adjacent pink sections)
Roma Norte (light blue) (Doctores 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)

Other Posts on the Porfiriato Era

• The Porfiriato: French Culture Conquers Mexico City
• The Grandeza of Porfirio Díaz
• Inside Porfirio's Palace
• Centro Historico Porfiriato - Late Nineteenth Century Mexico City
• Colonia Santa María la Ribera: Early Twentieth Century Century Popurrí
• Colonia San Rafael: Decay, Renewal and Restoration
• Colonia Benito Juárez: Where History Lives in the Shadows
• Colonia Cuauhtémoc: The First Decades of the 20th Century Marry the First Decades of the 21st
• Colonia Roma Norte Part I: Houses—and a Culture—That Survived a Revolution
• Colonia Roma Norte - Part II: Dreams in Stone and Glass...and Paint
• Colonia Condesa and Its Sisters - From Past to Present, Part I - Transition to the 1920's

Colonia Roma Norte - Part II: Dreams in Stone, Glass...and Paint

“I Speak of the City”
A novelty today, tomorrow a ruin from the past, buried and resurrected every day,

lived together in streets, plazas, taxis, movie houses, theaters, bars, hotels, pigeon coops and catacombs, . . . 

the city that dreams us all, that all of us build and unbuild and rebuild as we dream,  . . . 

I speak of the buildings of stone and marble, of cement, glass and steel, of the people in the lobbies and doorways, 
I speak of our public history, and of our secret history, yours and mine.

(Octavio Paz, “I Speak of the City” in The Collected Poems of Octavio Paz, 1957-1987,
ed. and trans. Eliot Weinberger, New York: New Directions Books, 1987, 511-517)

Octavio Paz's prose poem portrays with words how the buildings and streets of any city reflect the urban human condition. But each does so embodying the historical and cultural character that makes it unique. Octavio Paz's city was Mexico City. This blog of perambulations through the streets and neighborhoods of his city is our effort to make it ours.  

"A novelty today, 

tomorrow a ruin from the past, buried and resurrected every day,. . . 

the city that dreams us all, 

that all of us build and unbuild and rebuild as we dream" 

Aztec Templo Mayor
CLICK on any photo to enlarge it and open a gallery of all photos.

Mexico-Tenochtitlán, the city dreamt by the Mixeca/Aztecs, was literally buried by the Spanish conquistadores to create the city they dreamed, colonial Ciudad de México, now the Centro Histórico. We have wandered those ancient streets and observed how they have been redreamt by subsequent sojourners up to the present moment.

Palace of the Blue Tiles
Now a Sanborns Store and Restaurant

Then we saw how Porfirio Díaz and his late 19th century companions dreamt a European city of boulevards, Neo-Renaissance and Neoclassic palaces and French Second Empire homes for the bourgeoisie of modern industrialism.

Reception Hall, Palace of Communications,
now National Museum of Art

French-style Mansion
in Colonia Benito Juárez

Our walks through the colonias [neighborhoods] created under the Díaz regime have led us to discover how that Continental vision was continued and modified in the first half of the 20th century, after the Mexican Revolution, adding a re-imagined Mexican past embodied in neocolonial and California colonial imagery, among others.

California Colonial in Colonia Cuauhtémoc

Into those earlier Romantic dreamscapes we have witnessed the intrusion of late 20th century functionalism, with its puritanical vision that presents itself as a modern "realism" free of all dreams—and memories—of the past.

Functionalist Apartments in Colonia San Rafael

That ideal is now carried even further by postmodernity's steel and glass castles rising into the air.

Torre Mayor, on Paseo de la Reforma
a play on Templo Mayor

The city that dreams us all, that all of us build and unbuild and rebuild as we dream" 

In the first part of our perambulation through Colonia Roma Norte, in the Casa del Libro and Casa Lamm, and other homes on and near Calle Orizaba, we encountered other examples of the Porfiriato and post-Revolutionary dream of recreating a neoclassic European city, or, at least, its wealthy neighborhoods.

Leaving Casa Lamm, walking along Avenida Álvaro Obregón and down Orizaba as it continues south, we encounter additional embodiments of this nostalgic wish.

Neocolonial Hotel Colonia Roma
on Avenida Álvaro Obregón

Neocolonial House

Neoclassic Mansion

French Second Empire Mansion,
now Universidad Londres
on Plaza Luis Cabrera

More Dreams,  From an Increasingly Muddled Past

However, just west of Casa Lamm, on Avenida Álvaro Obregón, we meet a rather more fanstastic vision than those more classic dreams: El Parián. It is a market named after one that stood in the Zócalo, in the Centro Histórico from the beginning of the 18th until the middle of the 19th century.

  

El Parián Market

It is a kind of wedding cake confection of Moorish arches, Baroque spiral columns, crenellated Gothic towers and crests, and Spanish colonial elements—a quintessential dream castle. 

                       

It reminds us of the even more fantastic architecture of Porfirio Díaz´s Palacio del Correos, with its medley of Spanish Plateresque, Elizabethan Gothic, Italian Renaissance Revival, Moorish Revival, Neoclassical, Baroque and Art Nouveau styles. 

Here and there, on other streets, we run into less ostentacious but similarly fanciful daydreams.

Art Nouveau Fountain and Rainbow

    

A man's home is ....

Baroque Columns with Art Nouveau Stained Glass ...
and Asian Bamboo.

All these are, of course, the dreams of the wealthy, or of those who aspired to be so—dreams they could afford to turn into the relative permanence of stone and glass.

With their increasingly ornate elaborations and mingling of historically disparate styles, you feel that they were reaching for some lost or, perhaps, new cultural and personal identity, but were always seeking to find it in a romanticized past—one that would slip completely away over the next few decades.

Another Type of Dream

But there is another part of La Roma, without the wealth, but with a different kind of permanence and with other dreams, expressed in a far different manner. La Romita, Little Rome.

Semi-secluded in the colonia's northeast corner, La Romita was originally the indigenous Nahua pueblo of Aztacalco on an island in Lake Texcoco. With the arrival of the Spanish, came conversion to Catholicism, and, of course, the building of a parish church.

Santa Maria de la Natividad de Aztacalco,
1550

In front of the church is a traditional Mexican plaza that could be in any traditional provincial pueblo anywhere in Mexico—nowhere near upscale, cosmopolitan Roma.

Aztacalco kept its name and retained relative social and cultural autonomy until the beginning of the 20th century, when it was incorporated into the expanding Mexico City and subsumed as part of the new subdivision, La Roma. It became known as La Romita.

As a "popular", i.e., working class, indigenously-based barrio, it kept itself apart from the new La Roma of los de arriba (those from above)—as those from above stayed away from La Romita. The delightfully independent and keenly observant boy hero of José Emilio Pacheco's “Las batallas en el desierto” (The Battles in the Desert), who lives with his upper middle class family in La Roma, speaks of the danger of entering La Romita. 

Lacking the means to express their dreams in stone or glass, residents have turned to another medium to express theirs, by drawing on a long-standing tradition in Mexico.

   

Using the featureless walls of their houses, they express themselves with paint. Wall painting is one of the ancient Mexican arts, going back to the indigeous civilizations of such cities as Teotihuacán, Cacaxtla, Bonampak and Tenochtitlán.

Even Telephone Poles Become Visions

   

But there is also a more individual and modern note written on these walls:

"A Mexican never devastates me"

And with them, the universal, anonymous dream of the modern urban streets: the dream of an individual identity. 

We will come back to wall art and graffiti in our perambulations, but first we have to explore one last Porfiriato colonia, La Condesa. Then we'll move on to the next epoch in Mexico's history, the Revolution and the artifacts it has bequeathed to the City.

Colonia Roma Norte is bounded on the

North by Ave. Chapúltepec

East by Ave. Cuauhtémoc

West by Ave. Insurgentes.

South by Calle Coahuila (not shown)

Other Posts on the Porfiriato Era

• The Porfiriato: French Culture Conquers Mexico City
• The Grandeza of Porfirio Díaz
• Inside Porfirio's Palace
• Centro Historico Porfiriato - Late Nineteenth Century Mexico City
• Colonia Santa María la Ribera: Early Twentieth Century Century Popurrí
• Colonia San Rafael: Decay, Renewal and Restoration
• Colonia Benito Juárez: Where History Lives in the Shadows
• Colonia Cuauhtémoc: The First Decades of the 20th Century Marry the First Decades of the 21st
• Colonia Roma Norte Part I: Houses—and a Culture—That Survived a Revolution
• Seeking Restored Vitality: Colonias of the Porfiriato Have Varying Success
• Colonia Condesa and Its Sisters - From Past to Present, Part I - Transition to the 1920's

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)