URBAN LAND DEVELOPERS AND THE SPANISH COLONIAL STYLE IN MEXICO CITY

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JORGE H. JIMÉNEZ

One of  the cultural manifestations that best expresses the relationship between society, architecture and the city are the large urban areas built with a homogeneous architectural style.

The historical downtown area of Mexico City expresses a particular vision of community, order and hierchical structure with its urban and architectural uniformity. The spanish urban grid constituted an area segregated from the rest of the indigeneous city and its reticular grid had a peculiar distinctive defensive distribution. In Mexico, the Spaniards used two urban elements of this type. On the one hand, the fortresslike churches and on the other, the grid with a distinctive central area (plaza). By locating the public power buildings in the center of town, they not only showed their position but also obliged any possible invader to fight house by house before reaching the public buildings: thus, the City itself was a fortress.

This kind of urban distribution ended with Mexican Independence from Spain (1810), making way for a new style that was flourishing by the end of the Nineteenth Century. During the last three decades, modern urban development was based on land development and suburb type neighbourhoods called Colonias or colonies allowing the liberal and positivist City fostered by Porfirio Díaz, the Mexican dictator. The City grew based on isolated or island type colonies which allowed for freedom of choice and free enterprise. Families became the core of society. Independant family houses with a common architectural style showed the will to bring equals together and to clearly differentiate the spanish heritage from the indegeneous one. This type of City with its markedly french style architecture ended with the the Mexican Revolution of 1910.

The social and urban development that followed the Revolution were characterised by the development of new colonies that in a way replicated the Spanish urban grid with a central park-like plaza that had lost its hierachical meaning, and a modern version of the spanish colonial style constructions named in Mexico “Colonial Californiano” by it resemblance of the Californian Spanish Colonial style.

Click to Enlarge The Spanish Colonial style, also known as Spanish mission style was a part of the large and very eclectic architectural production that boomed in the United States during the Nineteenth Century and was used particularly in the south and southwest of the country. The quest for a distinguishing architectural style would allow the european inmigrants to assume better a new american identity in the land taken from Mexico, was able to solve environmental and housing problems that faced the that part of the country that could not be delt with through the European style architecture used on the East Coast and took sides with the self image that the United States wished to adopt after the War against Spain trying to take the latter’s place not only on the American Continent but as far away as the Philipines.
Click to Enlarge The Spanish Colonial style architecture offered housing complexes combining the characteristics of individual living quarters with patios that allowed for communal facilites, and together with lighter building materials adapted the buildings to less severe climatic conditions.
Click to Enlarge This architecture was an alternative to the traditional one housed plot, completly isolated and independent from the neighbors, using the front-door and the back-door scheme, surrounded by a yard and with an non transitional volume between indoors and outdoors.
For Mexico this architectural style signified the search for a style of it’s own, that represented tradition and modernization at the same time. A historilcal based style that could represent the new times and social structure, the acceptance of the influence of the United States in national culture and the incorporation of local values by way of them being accepted by another country. 

THE FIRST CONTACTS

During the first years of the Twenthieth Century, Bertram Godhue and Sylvester Baxter, who wrote the book titled Spanish Colonial Architecture in Mexico, visited our Country with the purpose of seeing colonial architecture. Baxter mentioned in his book that both he and Godhue had the good fortune to meet the young English architect Charles S. Hall and see his project for the new City Hall in Puebla (NT: State Capital of the same name, about 200 kilometers from Mexico City.) According to Baxter, Hall showed both his good taste and his sense of propriaty by seeking inspiration the Spanish models.

The importance of this and other contacts with colonial and new colonial architecture in Mexico greatly influenced the work of these architects in the United States as Irving J. Gill and Mead whose work extendes throughout California and, later influenced in turn Mexican architecture.

Click to Enlarge In 1922 Alfonso Pallares, Mexican Architect, visited Godhue’s influenced work in San Diego California: The Balboa Park (next four left photos). Then he wrote:
Click to Enlarge
Facing the ocean, on the hilltop, with rich green trees, plants and grans, and richly perfumed arise a series of buildings. How can I describe these buildings? As high skyscrapers? As huge open spaces with iron and glass walls and plain facades, quite yankee looking? Well, these buildings are charmingly arranged around wide avenues and delightful mansions in Balboa Park and are almost exact replicas of our colonial jewels and of some of the Spanish ones.
Click to Enlarge Here, built by a strange people and conceived by and even stranger architect, Mr. Bertram Godhue from New York, rises a cardboard and plaster monument to all the monumental beauty of our wonderful legacy that we only now begin to love and still know not how to protect as should be.
Click to Enlarge The awe of Architect Pallares and his call for us to rekindle the love for the colonial past were heard not by other architects but by the land developers of his times.

THE URBAN AND ARCHITECTURAL RENEWAL

With the fall fo the Porfirian regime, many builders and architects thought it was time to follow the path of Modern architecture. However, not only did french style buildings continue to appear but the Revolution strenghthened the idea of the home as the basis of a miniature family-state which seeked a new aesthetics with roots in the past not only reacting against decades of liberalism but also seeking order and stability.

Click to Enlarge On the one hand,  the nationalist movement influenced architecture by rejecting the frenchlooking Porfiriato style, and embracing three others: the Spanish Colonial influenced by the United States southwest architecture and particularly from California, the NeoColonial promoted by national traditional architects and adopted by large houses owners and the Art Decó that combined local handicrafts and new techiniques in architecture.
Click to Enlarge The architectural style that fullfiled the idea of posrevolutionary citizen was the Spanish Colonial. The possibility of owning a small castle, with no wall and with a large surrounding garden, USA style was more attractive to the Mexican consummer of that time. The Californian Spanish Colonial house was a worthy place for the middle class family thanks to its combination of modern construction materials, with images taken from religious and feudal architecture and from the ideal of order, hierarchy and a community made of independent equals.
Click to Enlarge Changes in national and international politics that followed the Second World War brought a closer relationship between the United States and México. Mutual visits of Presidents, for the first time in Modern history symbolized a new era of equalitarian relationships that also encouraged the development of this style in several areas of the Capital.

SPANISH COLONIAL AND THE LAND DEVELOPERS 

Californian Spanish colonial style was initially used during the 1920´s by the developers of Lomas de Chapultepec (originally named Chapultepec Heights) the first suburb development of Mexico City. The associates, originally from the US, including the manager, Samuel W. Rider, an experienced developer, decided to put up a sign at the entrance of the development as a symbol:

a model quarry stone building cut in the colonial style that has characterized mexican architecture.

Click to Enlarge Californian Colonial style was steadily adopted by the most important land developers of the times and specifically by José G. de la Lama and Basurto. During the mid 1920´s, these developers selling lots in their areas on the West side of the City (between the Chapultepec Heights and Mexico City downtonwn): areas such as Chapultepec-Polanco, Reforma-Polanco and Chapultepec which included Bellavista, Las Palmas, Molino del Rey and Bosque de Chapultepec all linked by several important Mexico City´s avenues: Paseo de la Reforma, Paseo de El Prado, la Explanada and Virreyes Boulevard.
Click to Enlarge During the first years of the forties, the colonies that was still been developed by De la Lama and Basurto, such as Reforma-Polanco all continued to promote this style. Javier Stavoli and Leonardo Noriega, engineer and architect designed and built San Agustin Church, the ornamental architecture, street lighting and street signs.
Click to Enlarge The development´s brochures refered to the sign system as evoking Spanish medival “muestras” or signs that hung outside the shops. They symbolized genuine colonial style with letters etched by fire.
Click to Enlarge Later and with a rigorousity that irritated a few architects, the Reforma Polanco development was regulated as follows:
Click to Enlarge Each house must have a 5 meter front yard. No apartment buildings may be erected. All construction must be uniform in style and pleasing to the eye.This uniform style was Spanish Colonial.
Click to Enlarge Architect Augusto Pérez Palacios sent the following message in response to the cited regulation:


To the authrorities: Did you know that certain development companies demand that their lots be constructed  only in spanish californian style. By doing so they are usurping powers that even you can  excersise because to do so would unconstitutional!.

MODERN ARCHITECTURE

The land developer José G. de la Lama promoted in his mentioned developments not only the Spanish Colonia style but also the last french style houses. In closer downtown De La Lama´s developments like the Insurgentes-Jalisco , the Chiapas and the Condesa sections of the Colonia Roma, he and his son built french style houses, copying those erected in the area at the end of the Porfiriato era (early 1900´s).

This attitude  gave strenght to the idea that although liked modern architecture, they were held in place by the demands of his clients and the need to mantain a unified style that would establish an urban identity in the “colonias” (land developments) as he himself implied in an interview:

I am committed towards making my development which is in the most beautiful and promising part the “La Condesa” became one of the most modern of México. I really wish to continue the tradition of our “chic” colonias such as the Colonia Roma or more exactly like the Colonia Juárez.

In the 1930´s Jose G. De La Lama expressed his desire to promote Modern architecture in a speech at the Rotary Club, but Funcionalist or Art-Déco architecture, with little or no decorative elements was not attractive to the societey that emerged from the Mexican Revolution. That´s the reason why the modern ideas of De la Lama did not inmediately reach his first land developments, partly because the sale of the lots was followed by a long process of construction that lasted several decades. Thus the social segment he had in mind came in contact with new images more adapted to their idea of modern comfort and style.

The Colonia Hipódromo Condesa was the first development that allowed De la Lama to approach in reality what he had expressed in words during his speech at the Rotary Club. The work of important mexican architects like Serrano and Barragán in this Colonia represented the dawn of Modern architecture in Mexico nonwithstanding its Art-Déco phase before abandoning decoration and facing new elements of beauty and comfort in structures that in themselves are decorative, as De la Lama  has always wanted. He died on the first day of the second half of the Century.

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