Caribbean baroque :
historic architecture of the spanish Antilles / by Pamela Gosner.
Passeggiata Press, Pueblo, Colorado : 1996.
XIX, 425 p. : il.
ISBN 1578890160
Sbc Aprendizaje A-72.034 BAR
Caribbean houses in
the eye of an antique lover
Alina Ochoa Alomá | Excelencias Magazines, 2010-12-00
Five hundred years of
history of the Western Indies are covered in the Caribbean Houses book by
Michael Connors donated to Havana by the author after its release. Dr.
Connors, with more than thirty years of experience as an essay writer,
professor and fine arts advisor in New York, is also known as an antique dealer
and an expert in architecture. This time he presents an illustrated edition
that, as well as his former books Caribbean Elegance, French Island Elegance,
Cuba Elegance, is an exquisite account for connoisseurs and collectors and
general readers. As noticed from his previous titles, it is obvious that Connor
finds the Caribbean heritage fascinating, and his willingness to combine his
thorough historical research with reflections on the cultural contribution to
the region, and wonderful images of houses and palaces in a high-quality
sizeable editorial format is highly appreciated. Caribbean Houses covers the
mark of European colonizing powers (Spain, England, France, Holland and
Denmark) in the Antilles, structuring the analysis of the legacy of the greater
and lesser islands throughout centuries of colonial and postcolonial history.
The author shows in a concise way the research scenarios and provides a clear
analysis of the legacy of the islands, facilitating the comprehension and
arousing the interest of readers. Making good use of the terminology, Connor
brings to light several historical events and studied the cultural
contributions of architecture and its decorative details. The author puts
together a text full of information that can be used by connoisseurs of the
subject, contributing abundant literature of more than 70 books. Published
stories about these islands of Carpenter’s “marvelous reality” don’t usually
offer a comprehensive and deep-enough views on the Caribbean region,
particularly on one side of its material on culture as well structured and
complex as architecture is. Another scholar of this heritage, Venezuelan Ramon
Paolini, wrote in his great book The Caribbean: After the Rijzwick Treaty in
1697 […] piracy is brought to an end and the Caribbean region enters its
greatest moment […] a generation has came from the Iberian Peninsula,
Netherlands, England, France and Denmark mixed with the little that is left
from Siboney and Taino indigenous tribes, accompanied by an immense contingent
of slaves from the far Africa, has the opportunity to undo the ravage left by
more than one hundred years of disorder. There is time to reinvent the city and
the home. […] The building of the city is retaken and prosperity invades the
region thanks to the astounding increase of trade between new flourishing ports
[…] the Caribbean is the exchange and meeting place of nations fighting over
supremacy. This writing is certainly the most synthetic statement Connors may
have seen to focus his study of the Caribbean architectural legacy. In the
preface to the book, Connor wrote: “Most of the great Caribbean houses from the
colonial era remain in ruins”. The cover of the Caribbean House is a picture of
the extraordinary porch and hallway of the Calvo de la Puerta (de la Obrapia)
House in Old Havana. The photo was impeccably taken by Andreas Kornfeld with
manipulation of the interior garden by Denise Barros. This revealing Cuban
colonial mansion, currently restored, is just the beginning of a repertoire of
residences and palaces offered by the author after his travels across the
Antilles. The Caribbean geography spans across 27 independent insular nations
and other overseas colonies, though its cultural geography is actually bigger
than that according to specialists. Connor’s study shows in detail the
similarities and differences between each of the colonizing process in the
Caribbean islands, as well as the characteristics of the mother countries.
Starting from there, Connors goes deep into the production of real state that
today is a cultural legacy in a globalized and endangered world in addition of
being a tourist asset associated to the geographical and weather mildness. If
there is something that can define the Caribbean architecture is the vernacular
vocabulary. The merging of European influences with local practices and
materials in the art of building of the 16th century through our days,
exploiting its particularities according to geography and weather, gave rise to
a local architecture that has certainly became an regional inheritance
currently dedicated to a large extent to tourism. As we leaf through the
extensive book, we realize that stone and timber are the materials prevailing
in classic great houses scattered around beautiful landscapes. Different to the
Hispanic Antilles –Greater Antilles–, British, French, Dutch and Danish
colonies –Lesser Antilles– became almost exclusively plantation lands without
any major settlements, where the remains of its original architecture show the
wide use of timber, and occasionally, of stone. The houses were also characterized
by steep slope roofing of attics and dormer windows, spacious hallways in front
of staircases due to the elevation from the ground, large airy porches to rest;
all of it decorated with exuberant carved details. The colonizing process,
especially in the English Antilles, gave rise to the well-known Caribbean
Victorian houses, also known as “gingerbread” as well as modest chattel houses
and shotgun houses, typical in Barbados and other islands. Spanish colonies, on
the other hand, being more densely populated, favored the development of a more
long-lasting architecture that left a mark, not only in great urban houses and
farmhouses, but also in churches, government palaces, theaters, factories and
fortresses. The main features of this architecture such as the wide use of
quarry stone and rough stone in walls, wooden roofs covered in fired clay taken
from the Hispanic-Arabian tradition, gothic, renascent and baroque
reminiscences in the details, the use of arches, galleries, and
carefully-symmetric patios, the use of polychromatic stained-glass windows,
iron works and nailing woodwork in the big front doors, make a difference with
the tropical architecture of the leeward arch. The monoculture of sugar cane in
nearly all of the islands, (“in the 17th, 18th and first half of the 19th
century […] sugar was queen of the Caribbean,” Connors says) left irrefutable
evidences not only of the houses owned by landowners who became rich with the
sugar trade, but in the different production structures such as sugar mills,
warehouses, slave huts, and others. One of the best facts about this book –if
not the best– is that it provide us with in-depth analyses of the domestic
architecture of outstanding mansions of plantation estates and the magnificent
urban palaces that are still standing in the Caribbean, making up a repertoire
that, according to the author, has been excluded by many travelers to the
Caribbean in their accounts during colonial times, and also from the literature
of the 20th century about the region. In the chapter “Spanish Antilles and the
Early Colonial Era” Connor’s sharp eye selects eleven extraordinary houses of
the region –two in the Dominican Republic and nine in Cuba– making documentary
emphasis in Alcazar de Diego Colon (Santo Domingo), Velazquez House (Santiago
de Cuba) and the Captain General and Segundo Cabo Palaces (Old Havana),
considered by Connor as jewels not to be missed due to its artistic and
preservation level. The author quotes important researcher Pamela Gosner
(Caribbean Baroque: Historic Architecture of Spanish Antilles, 1996) as saying:
“These stone ‘pearls’ have Elizabethan gothic characteristics, which can be
seen at the Cathedral of Santo Domingo and other early structures of the 16th
century”. “Santo Domingo represents as a whole a basic (primary) example of the
Caribbean early architecture,” Connors wrote and went on to explain how under
the Laws of the Indies enacted during the reign of Philip II, “Spanish
engineers and architects from the 16th century strictly followed the instructions
in reference to the planning and organization of colonial settlements, so that
streets were laid in a straight-angle reticule shape.” Definitely a landmark
revealing the conquest of the Caribbean, the Alcazar Palace, residence of
Diego, Christopher Columbus’s son, has been since 1510 through today “the best
example and domestic structure of Santo Domingo,” that is said to have been
built by around 1,000 natives. The author makes a detailed characterization of
another extremely important house, Diego Velasquez House in Santiago de Cuba,
another icon of Caribbean architecture of the 16th century which has
fortunately been restored. With the analysis of the not less extraordinary
Captain General’s Palace of Old Havana, Connors said “Spanish architecture on
the colonies became grander and more opulent than ever and combined elements of
Baroque colonial and Moorish styles with emerging neoclassic trends.” His
following chapters are dedicated to the inheritance of the leeward Dutch
islands, where he focuses on the conquest of trade and its impact in the
constructions; the English islands, making emphasis in typical colonial
plantation houses; the French Lesser Antilles and the architecture of Creole
states; and concludes with an account of the so-called Danish Virgin Islands,
known as the land of seven flags because of its history of conquests and
re-conquests of colonial metropolis of the region. Aruba, Bonaire and Curacao,
which were the main Antilles under Dutch colonization, basically grew as trade
ports and big salt producers. Through more than 1,000 sites of interest and a
little more than 300 farmhouses in different conservation states, these islands
still show a past of singular buildings. When analyzing the features of its
colonial architecture, the author mentions elements brought by the mother
nation that can be immediately identified: curved finishing of the scrolls
characteristic of saddle roofs, the use of contrasting colors and the wide
variety of sculptural ornaments, among others. The detailed review of the San
Juan Farmhouse, from the 18th century, one of the Dutch urban houses of
Willemstad, capital of Curacao, vouches for the characteristics of the Creole
architecture. The English islands, particularly Jamaica from the Greater
Antilles, as well as the smaller ones Saint Kitts and Nevis, Barbados Antigua,
Montserrat, Saint Lucia, Trinidad and Tobago, Turkish Islands and the group of
the Atlantic islands of Bahamas’ archipelago, also developed the salt (called
white gold) trade, as well as a sugar market, among other crops. The widespread
use of local hardwood described as exotic hardwood by the author but considered
humble by locals, was the main material used in rural constructions. However
the eventual use of stone gave rise to a particular style featured in the
Caribbean Georgian collection, and which was widely spread in Trinidad and
Tobago, Barbados and other island colonies. One of the most representative
houses featured in the account is the extraordinary Rose Hall mansion in
Jamaica, which is to the author the greatest house in the English Islands of
the Caribbean. With plenty of majagua woodwork elements and other handicraft
decorations of great quality, Rose Hall synthesizes a style, a refinement and a
relevant artistic conjunction of the different architectural trades. Equally
emblematic are the residence of George Washington in Bridgetown and the
Codrington College in the parish of St. James, both in Barbados, as well as the
White House of Cayo Sal in the Turkish Islands. Further in the book, Connors
reviews details about the heritage of the French islands, particularly
Martinique, Guadalupe, San Cristobal, not overlooking Haiti and the disappeared
baroque palace of Henri Christophe, Sans Souci, called the Versailles of the
New World for its majestuosity and size. In this part of the book, Connors
shows how Mediterranean traditional architectural techniques and styles were
adapted to local conditions. A display of beautiful pictures of La Rosa
farmhouse, in Haiti; La Pagerie Room, birthplace of Josephine de Beauharnais
Bonaparte in Martinique; among other equally important ones is also included.
Nearly at the end, there is a closer look to the Danish Islands’ repertoire,
particularly of sugar cane plantation houses from Saint Croix like the Whim,
Cane Garden and Cane Bay, all dating back to the 18th century. These houses
fall within the Caribbean Georgian trend or more specifically within the
“Neoclassical Palladian,” but the fact is that they are part of the
extraordinary heritage of the Caribbean region. Many of them are well preserved
by their current local or foreign owners or dedicated to high class tourism of
which part of its profit is used to maintain them. The merit of a book like
this one lies mainly in the effort to provide us with an insight of the
Caribbean particular architecture and the life of the social class that gave
rise to it, houses that “constitute a collection of hybrid vernacular
examples,” as the author said. Paraphrasing Mexican writer and historian Carlos
Monsivais: Michael Connors’s book is a commitment with the memory and culture
of this part of the world. Havana, December of 2010
Y TAMBIÉN...
“¡ Vaya Papaya!”: Cuban Baroque and Visual Culture in Alejo Carpentier,
Ricardo Porro, and Ramón Alejandromore
Monika Kaup | PMLA, vol.
124, n. 1 (2009)
The Neobaroque and the Americas
PMLA, vol. 124, n. 1 (2009)
Nuevos rumbos de la arquitectura tropical caribeña
Mauricia Domínguez | USJT, n. 6 (2011)
