Lonja del Comercio building

The Lonja del Comercio (Commerce Market) building in Old Havana, Cuba served as the stock exchange in the capital until the 1959 Cuban Revolution. Today, it is an office building.[1]

The building in 2008
General information
TypeOffice
Architectural styleEclectic
AddressNo 2 Calle Lamparilla
Town or cityHavana
CountryCuba
Coordinates23°08′17″N 82°20′54″W
Current tenantsCity Historian's Office, Brazilian Embassy, various news agencies.
Construction started1907
Completed1909
OpenedMarch 28, 1909
Renovated1995
Technical details
Structural systemSreel frame
MaterialMasonry
Floor count6
Floor area2,235.50 m2 (24,062.7 sq ft)
Design and construction
Architect(s)Tomás Mur, José Toraya
Structural engineerPurdy and Henderson, Engineers

History

The Lonja del Comercio first opened in March 1909. Set obliquely to the Plaza de San Francisco de Asís on its north side, it was designed in a mainly Renaissance and eclectic style as a commodities trading building. It is in close proximity to Basilica Menor de San Francisco de Asis. The dome is crowned by a bronze statue of Mercury, a replica of the original work of the messenger god by Flemish artist Giovanni Bologna.[1]

Architecture
Lonja del Comercio building, Havana, Cuba_under construction

The construction of the Lonja del Comercio began in 1907 and ended in 1909.[1] The building has a stone facing and a steel frame. It was designed by architects Thomas Mur and Jose Toraya, the structural engineers were the U.S. company Purdy and Henderson, engineers for many important Havana buildings including the Hotel Nacional, the National Theatre of Cuba, El Capitolio building, the Gran Teatro de La Habana and the 1947 Radiocentro CMQ Building by the architect Martín Domínguez Esteban who also designed the FOCSA Building in 1956.,

Parti pris
Lonja del Comercio building floor plan showing 9 square parti-pris.

The Parti pris of the Lonja del Comercio building in plan is a perfect square and based on the classic 9 square cube problem that was used,[lower-alpha 1] among others, by Peter Eisenman to design some of his houses and Andrea Palladio in the design of many of his villas.[2] [lower-alpha 2][3] The five-storey building has a steel frame structure. In 1939, an additional floor was added. The ground floor was originally used for warehouses and the stock market, the 2nd and 3rd floors provided office space, while the 4th and 5th floors, which adopted more sober ornamentation, were leased to customs brokers and trading companies.[4]

Renovation

After the Cuban Revolution, the Lonja del Comercio building suffered architectural deterioration through neglect. Although the Lonja del Comercio building was part of a capital rehabilitation program that was carried out in 1995 by the Office of the City Historian, in 1989[1] there is little indication that other similar buildings will be saved at least in the near future.[5]

  • Image from 1916
    Image from 1916
  • El Instituto Cubano de la Estabilización del Café, LA LONJA DEL COMERCIO
    El Instituto Cubano de la Estabilización del Café, LA LONJA DEL COMERCIO
  • Lonja del Comercio building
    Lonja del Comercio building

See also

Notes
  1. "A primary protagonist was Rudolf Wittkower, who had published important essays on role of geometry in the works of Alberti and Palladio, essays later collected in Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism (1949, 1962). The book includes Palladio's Geometry: the Villas, in which Wittkower argues that similar organizational schema underlie all the villas of Palladio. Wittkower's diagrams of the villas are variations of a three-bay by three-bay diagram; a nine-square grid. Wittkower suggests that Palladio's villas can be considered as a single conceptual project based on variations of an ideal plan diagram: “What was in Palladio's mind when he experimented over and over again with the same elements? Once he had found the basic geometric pattern for the problem ‘villa,’ he adapted it as clearly and as simply as possible to the special requirements of each commission. He reconciled the truth at hand with the ‘certain truth’ of mathematics which is final and unchangeable.”
  2. "The nine-square grid and its progeny can be considered formative in the redirection of pedagogy in American architecture schools, although it was not a pervasive until the late 1970s with the diaspora of the graduates of Cornell, Syracuse, Princeton, and Cooper Union to more and more architecture programs." Ref: Kit-of-Parts Conceptualism: Abstracting Architecture in the American Academy. www.harvarddesignmagazine.org/issues/19/kit-of-parts-conceptualism-abstracting-architecture-in-the-american-academy

References
  1. Emisora Habana Radio. "Lonja del Comercio de La Habana" (in Spanish). Archived from the original on 26 April 2012. Retrieved 28 November 2011.
  2. "Kit-of-Parts Conceptualism: Abstracting Architecture in the American Academy". Retrieved 2019-12-22.
  3. https://re.public.polimi.it/retrieve/handle/11311/1039839/247508/FA%2005%20Measures%20and%20Proportions.pdf
  4. "Lonja del Comercio "Trading Market"". 23 October 2019.
  5. "Havana's historic architecture at risk of crumbling into dust". Retrieved 2020-01-01.

Bibliography
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