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My name is Dag Walker,
formerly of the United States of America, currently a temporary
resident of Iquitos, Peru, and most recently the author of An
Occasional Walker, a collection of travel writings and memoir.
Since Oct. 2012 I have been compiling notes and writing short
vignettes on life in Iquitos, now grown to book length that I will
publish when my editor in Canada completes his work on the
manuscript. Meantime, I am seeking assistance from informed
professionals in Iquitos to help with fact-checking and original
contributions to this effort. I am below writing a four part “walking
tour” on some small section of the city centre's architecture.
Below is an outline of my progress as of this date. Your assistance
is deeply appreciated. Please contact me at:
Four Walking Tours of Central
Iquitos, Peru
People coming to Iquitos, Peru are
mostly unlikely to know the details of the city they see, tourists
especially, but also residents who focus on daily activities in their
own mileiux, all of whom thus miss seeing the city for what it
can be to those with a basic understanding of its history and the
vocabulary to articulate their visual experiences. Take the example
of architecture, the built environment that is, effectively, the
city, and of which only but a tiny minority of people are acutely
aware as a distinct and also contingent reality in which the person
exists. Truly, only the few of the city know the nature of the built
environment analogously to the knowledge of the curandero in
the selva. One might know the names of building like the
villager knows the names of plants, and one might know the contents
of a building's stock in the way a villager knows the medicinal or
nutritional values of plants; but there is the deeper level of
knowledge of the environment, natural or man-made, that reveals
mysteries and wonder to the man who examines with care and interest.
One can know more about ones place, and one can thus be in closer
contact with ones life as authentic facet of that environment,
perhaps gaining an affinity with the environment that is not even
suspected among the uninitiated, when one is articulate and informed
about the deep nature of ones own space, both private and shared. For
the general tourist this grasp of the city is unlikely at a glance;
and for the unattuned resident it is probably not assumed as
possible. One is thus alienated from ones place, a mere atomic being
without solidarity or a further sense of the matrix of ones life.
Even a casual study of a few built spaces can awaken the wonder of a
place to the otherwise occluded mind. Suddenly, with even a small
amount of knowledge about the possibilities of knowledge of ones
place, one can see, perhaps for the first time, that the city is a
complex web of life and triumph of the mind for the good. Life in the
city, outwardly no different from sleep to epiphany, can be exciting.
“Look at that building. It's all about our time and our lives; how
we came to be where we are and whom!”
On 5 Feb. 1987 the City of Iquitos passed Resolucion de Partimonio Monumental de la Nacion1. 1.Kanatari Magazine, Iquitos, Peru: CETA Publishing. 17 March 1996. p. 3 declaring roughly 87 buildings to be heritage sites in the city. Now, in one relatively short loop through
the city centre on foot one can see some of the city of Iquitos revealed as a
place of high drama, terrible beauty, unimaginable change in human
history, the struggles of Man against God, man against man, good for
all, and the continuing struggle to live, prosper, and procreate in
peace and felicity.
Walking Tour One.
Beginning a short walk around the
centre of Iquitos, one might begin at the Plaza de Armas, seeing for
the first time the reason such a place has existed in cities since
the days of the Romans and why Iquitos has its own Plaza de Armas
rather than not. Turning slightly, one can see the struggles of the
Catholic Church against encroaching power from the bourgeois; and
next one sees the bourgeois triumph of man over nature in the form of
the Rubber Boom era edifices of, for example, the Iron House; and one
sees the triumph as well of man over man as grand commercial palaces
are brought low by the turning tides of the flow of gold, and one
sees the tide of time itself as one looks at the Pinasco Building now
in its dotage.
Looking at the Plaza de Armas one sees
quickly the central concerns of those past: the war against Chile as
illustrated at the Obelisk; the reaction of Catholicism against the
rise of commerce in the form of the Neo-Gothic cathedral; the
mechanisation of labour and life in the Iron Building; and the
decline of the city as the Rubber Boom collapsed, leaving the lives
of many to linger in poverty and decay till the city was reborn, the
evidence of past grand houses of the rich standing as testament to
the fall as Jiron Lima (sometimes misidentified as Calle del Oro) was
eventually renamed Prospero, now dominated by the government in the
form of a massive and eclectic building used to collect and file
statistics, the INEI Building.
Such completes the first leg of a
journey of the mind through the city of Iquitos, the following three
stretches completing a short but illuminating tour of how it was, and
why, and why we are here today.
Part one of this walking tour of
Iquitos features the founding of the city and the rise and fall of
its population from the Jesuit beginning to the collapse of the
Rubber Boom and the eventual rise of the modern city of today. We
look at a brief selection of historical building as well as some more
contemporary, and we find a vocabulary from which we can move on to
other buildings in further walks in the city. As well, we look at the
architectural movement of Neo-gothic or Gothic Revival architecture
and its polar opposite, the Eiffel building of fin de siecle
Europe transplanted in the Amazon junlge. We look at the unique
features of the cathedral and then more closely at the biography of a
Peruvian painter. Along with amusing trivia such as the
misrepresentation of the War against Chile as seen in the Plaza de
Armas obelisk we learn of the significance of such plazas in general,
and perhaps have a chuckle over the naiveté of Spanish colonialists.
Essentially we establish a foundation for the rest of the walk around
the centre of the city. With this background, we can look further at
local buildings, and one might hope as well, at building off the
route. Having stopped to look at and examine buildings #239-243 and
#225-231 Putumayo; #129 Prospero, Casa Pinasco; and #201 Prospero,
INEI Building; as well as the others mentioned above, leaving the
INEI Building, one can walk farther down Prospero to see the history
of the city as it remains today.
Having established a basic
architectural vocabulary we can relent somewhat and focus instead for
now on architectural styles and techniques as well as biographies as
we continue our walk. In part two, our focus will be on azulejo
tiles and the biographies of the Morey family.
Walking Tour Two
#246-250 Prospero, Casa Power.
Year of inauguration [1925?]. Brief
bio. of family. Attention to details of facade.
#257-261 Prospero, Casa Mendes.
Year of inauguration. Brief bio. of
family. Attention to details of facade.
#288-298, Casa Garcia Sanz.
Year of inauguration. Brief bio of
family. Attention to details of facade.
#300 Prospero
Elucidate the nature of the cast heads
on the roof top. Who is that!?
#318-22 Prospero, unidentified.
Anchor design on roof. PMT
[photomagnetic transfer] printed “polished stone” foundation.
#324-328[?] Unidentified.
Features an elaborate roof crest and
guardian lions. Details.
#379 Prospero, Casa Wong[?]
Currently Inca Farma.
Year of inauguration; original owner.
Note in passing the Cohen tiles and trim.
#401-439 Prospero, Casa Cohen.
Year of inauguration. Brief bio of
family. Who was Reuben Cohen, and did he run off owing a million
soles? Attention to details of facade, particularly the elaborate
tiles and wrought iron work.
#402-418, Casa L.P. Morey.
Year of inauguration. Brief bio of
family. Attention to details of facade.
Featurette on azulejo tiles here.
#502-540 Prospero, Morey and sons.
Year of inauguration. Attention to
details of facade.
Featurette bio. of Morey family here.
Part three of our walk will again bring
us to some interesting and occasionally beautiful buildings in this
transitional walk down Brasil St. Here we'll look at two Rubber Boom
era building, the local lock-up, and we'll have a trivial joke about
the Naval building roof while learning a little bit about local
history in the form of biographies of Peruvian heroes.
There ends part
two of our walk in Iquitos. We transit to Brasil street to allow us
to reach our main destination of Malecon Tarapaca. Along the way
we'll look at four sites.
Walking Tour Three
#138 Brasil, Casa Texiera.
Year of inauguration. Attention to
details of facade.
Featurette bio. of family.
#145 Brazil, El Carcel.
Year of inauguration. Attention to
details of facade. Anecdote of famous prisoner.
#156 Brazil, Casa Morey.
Featurette on wrought iron.
#163? Naval Building. Currently
misidentified as #129.
Anecdote on “brass monkeys.” Bio of
Peruvian heroes.
Walking Tour Four
#442-464 Malecon Tarapaca.
Year of inauguration. Nature of
building. Attention to details of facade.
#384-386 Malecon Tarapaca, Casa
Fernandez.
Year of inauguration. Brief bio of
family. Attention to details of facade.
#382 Malecon Tarapaca, Dept. of
Culture.
Year of inauguration. Nature of
bilding. Attention to details of facade.
#354 Malecon Tarapaca, Biblioteca
Amazonica.
Year of inauguration. Attention to
detais of facade. Featurette on the library collection.
#334-338, Casa Cohen?
Year of inauguration. Brief bio of
family. Attention to details of facade.
#260-268 Malecon Tarapaca, Casa
Caritas.
Year of inauguration. Brief bio of
family. Attention to details of facade.
Featurette on Lope de Aguirre and
Werner Herzog.
#200-228 Malecon Tarapaca, Hotel
Palace.
Year of inauguration. Attention to
details of facade. Show in prose the glory years of this magnificent
building.
Conclusion
….
Iquitos, Peru: An
Historical Architecture Walking Tour.
WALKING
TOUR OF IQUITOS
Founding the City
From 1888 to 1912 Iquitos, Peru was an
internationally important boom town that served the world as a centre
of the rubber export business. A city of 20,000 people suddenly
exploded with dynamic men bent of amassing great fortunes, and with
those fortunes some spent their money on architectural works that
remain in the city today as a legacy of man's triumph over a banality
of poverty, showing the world that man can do wondrous things when he
has the means and will unfettered. Beautiful houses arise from the
jungle, vast and lovely hotels and stores and plazas adorn the land
and speak the greatness of the human spirit. Walking in the historic
centre of Iquitos, Peru one sees excellence built all around one as
today mototaxis fly like raindrops in the wind, as people dressed
brightly in fine clothes hurry by happily on their ways to work and
family amidst relative plenty in the emerging Modern world of this
city in the Amazon jungle. Walking down the street is cause to gaze
in wonder and pride at the sights of the city.
Miranda:
O wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world
That has such people in't!
The Tempest Act 5, scene 1, 181–184
This first entry will cover the area of
and around the Plaza de Armas to Prospero St. Next, we'll continue
our walk down Prospero St. where we will end to take up Part Three on
Brasil St. before completing our tour by strolling down the Malecon
Tarapaca to wind it all up at Dawn on the Amazon cafe at Napo street.
Iquitos, located on the Amazon River [at the conjunction of the Nanay and Itaya rivers] in northeastern Peru, was originally one of the numerous Indian settlements organized by the Jesuit missionaries in the 16th century, and was known as San Pablo de Napeanos. Its population dispersed, but a community was re-established around [1757]. Since the majority of the population were Iquitos Indians it became known as the village of Iquitos.
In 1864, three years after President Ramón Castilla had established the Departamento de Loreto* (State of Loreto) port facilities were built and this is generally considered as the founding date of Iquitos. Iquitos is the furthest inland deep-water port in the world and receives ships coming up 2300 miles from the mouth of the Amazon on the Atlantic Ocean. To this day there are no roads in or out and Iquitos can only be reached by river or air.
At the end of the nineteenth century Iquitos, along with Manaus, Brazil, prospered greatly from the exportation of rubber. During this period of grandeur many fine buildings were erected, including the “Iron House” designed by Gustav Eiffel of Eiffel Tower fame, which was purchased at the Paris World’s Fair by a rubber baron, disassembled and brought to Iquitos where it was re-assembled in 1886 and still stands on the Plaza de Armas. The center piece of the Plaza de Armas, the Iquitos cathedral, was completed in 1911. The Hotel Palace designed by Otoniel Vela Llerena, one of Gaudi’s students, was built between 1908-1912, and is one of many buildings faced with ceramic tiles imported from Italy and Portugal. With the end of the Rubber Boom, 1912, Iquitos fell into a deep decline and it wasn’t until the discovery of oil in the mid-twentieth century that Iquitos began to prosper again.
Today Iquitos has a population around [460,000] and depends on exports of oil, wood, plant products and tourism.1.
1.Photos by Scott Humfeld (other than B/W and where noted. B/W photos courtesy of Sr. Serafin Otero, ex-Director of Tourism for Iquitos.) http://scottiquitos.blogspot.com/
Iquitos, on the Amazon River 1,860 km
northeast of Lima is the capital of Loreto. “Loreto is the largest
department in Peru, 345,000 sq. km., larger than Ecuador.”* Even
today Iquitos is relatively remote. One hundred years ago it was
extremely remote and becoming moreso by the day. By the end of 1912,
Iquitos was on the path almost to a time prior to 1880 and the
beginnings of the Rubber Boom.
*Alan Morrison, The Other Tramways of Peru. March 2004.www.tramz.com/pe/ot/ot00.html
*Alan Morrison, The Other Tramways of Peru. March 2004.www.tramz.com/pe/ot/ot00.html
Iquitos grew very slowly until the
Rubber Boom of 1880-1912, which brought to the Amazon jungles
adventurers and men who craved money. Such men found both in
abundance, and some, with some of their money, built the
architectural legacy that makes a walk through Iquitos' city centre
so interesting today. Rubber brought wealth, and wealth created the
buildings that make so much of Iquitos beautiful to this day. Two
hundred years ago there was no city. One hundred years ago there was
a boom town. Today there is a city of half a million people living in
relative affluence amidst a lovely, if crumbling, architectural
legacy.
2.P. Gregorio Martínez, OSA [Orden de San Agustín (Order of Saint Agustine)] and P. Joaquín García, OSA, “Vicariato Regional de Iquitos en la Amazonía Peruana. http://oala.villanova.edu/historia/iquitos.html
Thereafter: “In 1808, Hipólito Sánchez Rangel, the bishop of Maynas, (of which Iquitos is now the capital,) reported that the village had 171 inhabitants, and on June 8, 1842 the town had just over 200 inhabitants.”3. 3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iquitos
In 1860, according to [writer] Paz
Soldán, the town had only 300 inhabitants. Two years later, the
population increased to about 431 inhabitants, and according Genaro
Herrera in 1864/66, there were 648 people, predominantly mestizo. By
1876, again the same author reports a population of 1,475
inhabitants. [Between the years 1897 when the district of Loreto was
formed with Iquitos as its capital, and] 1903, in the middle of the
rubber boom, Iquitos had grown to 9,438 inhabitants.4. 4.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iquitos.
Peruvian immigrants
from the High Forest, colonies of Spain, Portuguese, Chinese, Jews
and others attracted by the [the lure of wealth] of rubber. Iquitos
eventually had nine consulates in those days.
The
Indians were divided into two groups: the baptized, considered
"Christians and civilized" [according to the Catholic
Church and the rubber traders,] and the unbaptized, taken [as]
savages, [captured in slave] raids for forced labour in [the] rubber
[trade.] [There was] systematic [cruelty] from Ecuador [Colombia and
Peru] to Brazil with lucrative profits in Iquitos, Manaus and Acre.
Such genocide caused the [extinction of a] considerable number of
ethnic groups [in the Amazon region]. The few Indians who were saved
from extermination safeguard[ed] their freedom [by] going back in the
deep woods and inaccessible headwaters of rivers.5.
5.
P. Gregorio Martínez, OSA and P. Joaquín García, OSA, “Vicariato
Regional de Iquitos en la Amazonía Peruana.”
http://oala.villanova.edu/historia/iquitos.html
Population accounts vary, but one can estimate that at the height of the Rubber Boom the city of Iquitos had about 10,000 people, some of whom were extraordinarily wealthy, due to the rubber trade.
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| Maynas Regional Crest* |
Iquitos' population had grown due to
the Rubber Boom and its attendant draw of profit and adventure, but it came at a price in
depravity as some men lost their minds to greed, engaging in slavery,
torture, and murder to enforce a labour contingent of hunter-gatherer
natives to supply the trade with latex for the foreign market.
Mostly men, some came from Lima and other parts of South America,
from North America, others from Europe and the Near East. Much money
was made and spent in Iquitos, some of that money made in the Rubber
Boom era staying in the city and going into buildings that remain in
Iquitos today as the patrimony of the city and the nation.
One of the first major building
projects [developed in 1905] in Iquitos is the Plaza de Armas,
a
typical feature of important Spanish cities, at
the centre of the current city.
Plaza de Armas, Iquitos
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| Plaza de Armas, c. 1905 |
The Plaza de Armas
(literally "Weapons' Square") is the name for the main
square in many Latin American cities. While some large cities have
both a Plaza de Armas and a Plaza Mayor, in most cities those are two
names for the same place.
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6.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plaza_de_ArmasMost cities constructed by the Spanish Conquistadores were designed on a standard military fashion based on a grid pattern, taken from the Roman Castrum, of which one of the blocks would be left vacant to form the Plaza de Armas. It is often surrounded by governmental buildings, churches, and other structures of cultural or political significance. The name derives from the fact that this would be a refuge in case of an attack upon the city, from which arms would be supplied to the defenders.6
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The Plaza de Armas in Iquitos is a block long, bordered by 80 foot palm trees; and, within that bordered block one sometimes sees dejected children walking home barefoot, having lost the shoes they've thrown into the branches of leafy maney trees (or poma rosa trees as they are called as well) in an effort to knock down the red-skinned fruit hanging out of reach; and one sees llama topiary dotting the grass land between pedestrian walkways; a massive fountain that works in the evenings as a rule; and in the centre of the Plaza stands an obelisk commemorating those fallen in the War of the Pacific against Chile in 1879. "The obelisk was unveiled on 31 December 1908 by mayor Nicanor Saavedra of Iquitos."* The rest, as they say, is history.
*http://www.siturismo.org.pe/
The high relief brass plaques on the war memorial depict scenes from the Battle of Tarapaca. One plaque, based on the work of Peruvian political figure and historian Genero Herrera, was founded in .... [Italy?] where those in charge of crafting the actual work had a weak grasp of world events; but they make a ferocious, if not entirely successful, attack on Geography:
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| War Against China? |
Herrera's mustachioed Peruvian soldiers now do battle with high cheekboned Chinese soldiers in conical hats-- the brass foundry workers having mistaken Chile for China.**
Chile? China? Somewhere they were somebody.
At the corner of Napo and Arica is currently the vermiculated mural of a Shipibo ayahuasca experience. The squiggly lines of the mural are representative of anacondas and geometric visions under the influence of the liquid extracted from the ayahuasca vine/chakruna leaf in native ceremonies.
#139 Arica Society Espanola Beneficia.
Constructed in 19XX, the parapet roof is a strange example of an early attempt at multi-cultural ingratiation in five parts, the centrepiece being a ziggurat Aztec pyramid with a pagoda ziggurat atop it, and two more pagoda ziggurats at either side of the roof corners. Or, it could be a big broken pineapple on top of the roof. Or it could be a clunky-looking Christmas tree. Experts tend to disagree. Inside the large central ziggurat is a Spanish royal coat of arms. To add to this homage to Spanish history, the building interior has a giant centre-piece horseshoe-shaped Moorish arch. Connoisseurs of the fine arts call all this "eclectic."
Gothic Revival Church: Iglesia Matriz o Catedral
(Parent Church or Cathedral)
The
first Catholic church in Iquitos was built roughly at the current
location of the 1879 war memorial at the Plaza de Armas from
1870-1873, and was made of mud brick with a tile roof and an alter
made of bricks.
“After
30 years the building became dilapidated. In 1905 it was demolished
by order of prefect Colonel Pedro Portillo.”7.
7.Comisión de Promoción del Perú
para la Exportación y el Turismo - PROMPERU
Jirón Napo N° 161, Iquitos, Loreto
16001
At the southeast corner of Putumayo at
Arica across the street from the Plaza de Armas is the cathedral
Iglesia Matriz de Iquitos,
[The Apostolic Vicariate of Iquitos
(Latin: Vicariatus Apostolicus Iquitosensis).]
The church was established on 5 Feb. 1900 as the Apostolic Prefecture
of San León del Amazonas from the Diocese of Chachapoyas. The church
is primarily yellow, in a Gothic Revival style [with a single nave]
and was originally built from 1911 till completion in March 1919. On 22 Feb. 1921 it was
promoted as Apostolic Vicariate of San León del Amazonas. The tower
was begun in 1923 and
concluded in 1924. In 1925 the Board of Local Progress installed the
Swiss-made the clock, 4:00 (IV) depicted as the traditional IIII. The
church was renovated in 1945 under the direction of father Avencio
Villarejo. 1 Aug. 1945 it was renamed Apostolic Vicariate of
Iquitos. the facade, chancel and altar were remodeled in 1999 under the direction of Rev. Fr. Past. Angel Aparicio. 8.,9.,10.
9.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apostolic_Vicariate_of_Iquitos
10.Ministerio de Commerico y Tourismo, "Iglesia Martiz."
10.Ministerio de Commerico y Tourismo, "Iglesia Martiz."
Iglesia
Matriz o Cathedral
When the church was first built c.1905,
the Rubber Boom was well under way and many of Iquitos' buildings
rivaled the best architecture in South America at
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| Stained Glass Quatrefoil Window |
the time, the
designers and financiers having much money to indulge in building
monuments to earthly success; and so it was in Europe and the
Americas generally that the bourgeois, a new class of wealthy men,
could afford to build monuments to commerce. There was a 'religious'
reaction against this earthly splendour. The Church, (meaning various
denominations,) spent vast amounts of money as well; and in the case
of the Catholic Church in Iquitos it spent its architecture budget on
"Gothic Revival," a counter-movement in architectural
fashion meant to distance itself from secular architecture. The point
was to 'return' to a more religious time architecturally.
One can see in the stained glass quatrefoil windows that symbolise the four Apostles, i.e. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, the actual revival of religious interest, particularly in contrast to our contemporary monochrome patchwork coloured glass windows in "postmodern" churchs, abstract aglomerations of plastic that keep out the glare of the sun.
One can see in the stained glass quatrefoil windows that symbolise the four Apostles, i.e. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, the actual revival of religious interest, particularly in contrast to our contemporary monochrome patchwork coloured glass windows in "postmodern" churchs, abstract aglomerations of plastic that keep out the glare of the sun.
As the Rubber Barons and those others
who made vast fortunes from the Amazon built marvelous buildings in
Iquitos, the Church did so too, going against the trend of Modernity,
i.e. steel, concrete, and Muslim-style nonrepresentational ornamental
art. The church went Medieval.
Gothic Revival
As Iquitos became an international hub of fast money and plenty of it, Modernity came rapidly in the form of new architectural styles, the azulejo tiled houses and buildings evidence, the Iron House the perfect example of philistine bad taste. The democratic nouveau riche aspiring to previously undreamed of positions of social and economic power aftr rising from former primogeniture-based and class-based post-feudal social relations of privilege and entitlement, i.e. that one has a “title” and with it is entitled to whatever privilege that title endows, the newly rich and mundane built monstrous behemoth buildings all too often. In reaction, some regressed to an earlier time, at least attitudinally, sometimes architecturally. With the rise of Modernity came the rise of Romanticism, the reaction.
As industrialisation progressed in
Britain, so too did a reaction against machine production and the
appearance of factory buildings. By 1834 Thomas Carlyle and Augustus
Pugin had established a critical view of industrial society in their
writing and had started to point back to pre-industrial medieval
society as a golden age. To Pugin, Gothic architecture was infused
with the high Christian ideals and values that had been eclipsed by
classicism and were being destroyed by industrialisation.10.
10.http://www.artscrafts.org.uk/roots/pugin.html
…
The ultraconservative/reactionary Neo-Gothic movement is much loved by consistently incoherent Modernist “Progressives” who vaunt the “back to nature” Romanticism of William Blake and William Morris while at the same time f.i. demanding of the public purse free contraception. (C.f. lawyer Sandra Fluke, 2012.) In fact, Neo-Gothic is a radical alternative to Modernity in that for the Gothic Revival style, “Religion was the major driving force for the masons and carvers who created these great buildings; they 'exercised their talents in the service of God'.”11.
One might claim this reactionary
movement to be politically motivated, but essentially it is a
preindustrial peasant refusal to accept Modernity and its destruction
of feudal social organisation. Hardly political, it was a personal
matter for most not wanting to change jobs or ways of living and
place. Modernity is for most, freedom. As H.L. Mencken points out,
most men do not want freedom, they want security. Modernity offers
much, as one sees in the Rubber Boom, but it also extracts a price.
Some were not willing to pay it.
Gothic Revival is originally an English
architectural movement in reaction to the simplicity and elegance of
the Neoclassical, and too, against the overwrought work of the
Baroque and Rococo periods.
The Gothic Revival began in England
around 1750, its greatest proponent being Augustus Pugin (B. 1812 –
D. 1852) who had “Two Great Rules” for Gothic Revival
architecture:
On the face of it, such an approach to
architecture should leave us living in caves, which is nothing at all
to do with Neo-Gothic architecture. However, philosophically and in
practice this Rousseauvianism/ Romanticism does pose problems in the
world. Such is the subject of other books.
“Gothic Revival also took on
political connotations; with the "rational" and "radical"
Neoclassical style being seen as associated with republicanism and
liberalism (as evidenced by its use in the United States and to a
lesser extent in Republican France); the more "spiritual"
and "traditional" Gothic Revival became associated with
monarchism and conservatism, which was reflected by the choice of
styles for the rebuilt Palace of Westminster in London.13.
13.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gothic_Revival_architecture
The Gothic Revival reached back
intellectually to an imagined time of purity, to a place in the mind
where the adherents of the new movement could see a perfect place of
clear blue skies and happy, well-fed peasants living in harmony with
their fellows in a utopian state of affairs. The romantics of so many
sorts, all reactionary, reached back to the Middle Ages for the
Golden Age they wished to recreate.
Gothic is a term used to describe a
style of European Architecture which began in the late twelfth
century and dominated building design in Europe until the sixteenth.
The wealth and power of the church at that time provided the money
and the inspiration to build great churches and these are most
common, though not the only, kind of Gothic building which also
includes civic buildings, university buildings, hospitals and town
houses.14.
Not everyone was impressed. Some looked
back even further for inspiring times, so far as Classical Rome and
Greece, looking on the reactionaries of the time as wreckers of a
beautiful dream of good order and harmony, akin, they would have it,
to Rome and Athens at their best.
“The word
'Gothic' was originally an insult, associating the style with German
tribes who had ransacked Rome. Classical styles were based on
elements found in ancient Greek and Roman architecture, including
strict proportions, columns from a limited stock of orders,
colonnades, domed roofs, and other features. In various forms and
degrees of adherence to its fundamental principles, classicism
dominated architecture in Britain until well into the nineteenth
century.”15.
Regardless of ones philosophical
approach to architecture, it must be indisputable that Neo-Gothic
buildings are often strikingly beautiful, burying even deeper for
most of us the underlying debates about politics.
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| Drawing of Church Front |
The most commonly
identifiable feature of the Gothic Revival style is the pointed arch,
used for windows, doors, and decorative elements like porches,
dormers, or roof gables. Other characteristic details include steeply
pitched roofs and front facing gables with delicate wooden trim
called vergeboards or bargeboards. This distinctive incised wooden
trim is often referred to as “gingerbread” and is the feature
most associated with this style. Gothic Revival style buildings often
have porches with decorative turned posts or slender columns, with
flattened arches or side brackets connecting the posts. Gothic
Revival style churches may have not just pointed arch windows and
porticos, but often feature a Norman castle-like tower with a
crenellated parapet or a high spire.16.Citation?
16.Wikipedia, Gothic Revival.
The outer features of a Gothic
building often show signs of fortress-like indominability, bastions
of defence against outside attack, places of formidable sanctuary
against aggression and attack. They are often military in design. On
the inside, however, one sees something sometimes close to heaven.
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| Standard Church interior floor plan |
Cathedral Interior
Nine panels show religious scenes painted by Aida Calvo and Father Edilberto Américo Pinasco. The main altar contains a triptych oil painting by César Calvo de Araujo. It has 18 stained glass polychrome windows. The Gothic style pulpit was built by cabinetmaker Bernuy Manuel Ortiz, and ornamentation and painting of walls and columns was done by Ernesto Berninger. The remains of the first two bishops of the Vicariate of Iquitos, Bishop Sotero Garcia and Monsignor José Redondo Pulgar Vidal, lie in state.17., 18.
17.
Ibid. PROMPERU
18.http://www.moon.com/destinations/peru/the-amazon/iquitos/sights/city-tour
18.http://www.moon.com/destinations/peru/the-amazon/iquitos/sights/city-tour
Church artist: Cesar
Calvo de Araujo (1910-1970)
Calvo de Araujo painted public works murals between 1963
to 1964, long after having worked the decoration of the Presbytery of
the Mother Church, under the direction of P. Avencio Villarejo,
culminated its expansion and renovation. In all, three murals of
the cathedral (of the 13 made by various artists: 7 by Aida Young; 1.
Américo Pinasco; 1. Victor Valleys; 1. Edilberto P. Morey) the
artist captures the work of the Catholic missions in the jungle one
of the two large murals of the municipality (the arrival of
Orellana), the author autoretrata "in the face of an occasional
surprise witness that
César
Calvo de Araujo
discovery", as reported by Luis Hernan
Ramirez at number 215 of the
magazine "Amazon" , in June
1993. Count the poet Javier Davila Durand, friend of the artist, the
opening night of the murals, when the blessing by the Bishop García
Thumb, Vicar of Iquitos, the Calvo told that a character of the same
had some resemblance to the artist, to what Calvo, laughingly
replied, "I was there," pointing to a bearded man looked on
sideways.19., 20.
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Iglesia Matriz de Iquitos
|
Upon leaving the cathedral one might notice the church's foundation stones. As part of the reaction against materialist architecture one sees there cut and polished natural stone. In a building made specifically in a defiant style, a building that shouts against man-made power, there is the natural stone polished to a shine that the building sets upon. I believe this is not merely by chance but is a further reaction and emphatic artistic statement of the artists involved in contrasting the polished stone of the church against the azulejo tiles so prominent in secular buildings in the city during the period.
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Archivolt arch over church door
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As part of the reaction against materialist architecture one sees cut and polished natural stone as the foundation of the church. One might compare this to the ubiquitous azulejo tiles of building in the next part of our journey.
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“Habia nacido el 'azulejo,' vocablo arabe que no alude al color azul sino a la piedra pulido.”21.
21.Alberto Rios, “Azulejos: Vendidos Desde Lejos,” Kanatari. 17 July 2011. Iquitos, Peru: CETA; p.15.
Rubber Boom Buildings
As the Rubber Barons and those others
who made vast fortunes from the Amazon built marvelous buildings in
Iquitos, the Church did so too, going against the trend of Modernity,
i.e. steel, concrete, and Muslim-style nonrepresentational ornamental
art. The church went Medieval. But 'Progress Marches On.'
#239-243 Putumayo St. Officinas de Contribuciones
Going N.E. toward the river as one walks past the Plaza de Armas, two buildings stand out. Both are relatively recent. The first, currently the Universal Import Com. building at ground level, was constructed between 19XX and 19XX. It was originally the Officinas de Contribuciones.
This two story building in the middle of the block by the cathedral and across from the Plaza de Armas is at street-level so banal as to warrant no further attention. The lower section of the second story and above deserve a closer look, incorporating as this building does elements of the neoclassical, but displaying zero design congruent with the church at the corner. Hilariously, at least from a distance, one sees crenelated / plaster keystones and foliated cables that give the effect of seeing a suspension bridge spanning the front of the building. In fact, upon closer examination the keystones break up elliptical festoons of flora, ending in whorls.
Of the five balconettes on the second floor, the flanking two are of medium height cast concrete balustrades with a ventilated base of lower double vaulted row of concrete arches over ball anchors; the spindles are plain bases and capitals with amphora bellies; the inside two balconettes are blind fronts; and the middle balconette is a rounded parade-view balcony, the underside with a reverse scallop corbel bracket of elongated, rounded coquillage….
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| Avignon Cathedral |
An early version of the bay balcony is the machiolation outcrop of a castle, the "balcony" floor having holes from which defenders could shoot arrow downward, drop stones on people, or pour boiling oil on them. As in the illustration above* *Elise Whitlock Rose, Cathedrals and Cloisters of Sothern France, Vol I. (New York: Putnam and Sons.) 1906; p. 105. , balcony braces can eventually become decorative.
Atop the five neoclassical rectangular windows are floral crest moldings, the underside of the centre with a tympanum has a square label, parapet molding and below, a window crest displaying snake-like flora sprouting from a scarab-like coat of arms. Hanging from each side of the windows is a grape-cluster, signifying prosperity and for others, Catholic communion. The roof is one of the few remaining baked clay red tile roofs in the area.
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#225-231 Putumayo St. Department of Agriculture.
Next door at 225-231 Putumayo is the X building, constructed from 19XX to 19XX. It was originally the Dept. of Agriculture building. The most interesting features of this building are the bevelled bellies of the baluster spindles with doughnut sleeves, and diamond-shaped losenge vents along the base of each balcony, which echo the diagonal brickwork of double diagonal groves surrounding all four sides and framing the centre of each brick with symmetrical perforations that create an I Ching [Ee Jing] effect or, more likely, a very simple arabesque; and of the five windows across the facade, an arcade window of two high, narrow arched windows inside a large and encompassing arch, each arch window having trefoil stained glass panels in a triqueta Celtic style of a continuous line of came, (i.e lead holding the panes in place) symbolising unity and infinity of the Trinity.* *Walter E. Gast, Symbolisim in Christian Architecture. The remaining three separate arched windows are each capped with a unifoil arch, a kind of bubble atop each arch itself. Both buildings are elegant and without pretension.
La Casa de Fierro (or) The Iron House
The Iron House itself came to Iquitos circuitously from the Paris Expo.
La Casa de Fierro
is one of the finest as well as best-preserved samples of civil
architecture in Peru. The walls, ceiling, and balcony are plastered
in rectangular sheets of iron. It is said to be the first
prefabricated house in the Americas. Rubber baron Anselmo del Aguila
bought it at the International Exposition of Paris in 1889. Once
dismantled, it was brought in pieces to Iquitos (the metal sheets
were carried by hundreds of men through the jungle), and assembled
there in 1890.23. 23.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casa_de_Fierro
Hundreds of men in the jungle comes
from the movies. The parts were hauled over a couple of paved
streets. But it would make a great movie scene nonetheless. Oh,
Fitzcarraldo by Werner Herzog.
By a long series of adventures and
mishaps the disassembled Iron House came ashore of the Amazon river
jungle during the Rubber Boom, half of the original building still in
the city centre of Iquitos at a corner across from the Plaza de Armas
where it stands like a shiny tin-plated shoe box fronted with
rivetted, silvery metal beams in place of the usual Classical
columns, the silver beams a reminder of a time when over-fed men in
white linen suits and black silk top hats lit fat cigars with hundred
dollar bills while naked cunchos, Amazonian natives, died by
the thousands from murder and hardships harvesting chuchos,
spheriod balls of raw rubber sap harvested in the jungle to speed the
world to the future in new-fangled horseless carriages cranked out by
Mr Ford, cars rattling down rough roads barely impacted by the
equally recent invention of Mr. MacAdam, creator of pavement, useful
thanks to Mr. Goodyear who gave the world rubber tyres . Back in the
Rubber Boom day, Iquitos was a world centre of high import, and the
wealthy chingaderos there made the most of the money. Those
men have moved on and died, but the architectural legacy of the
Rubber Boom remains to a degree as testimony to the time when
Progress was god, and ordinary men could live like kings. Some bought
whole Eiffel buildings. One stands today in Iquitos, La Casa de
Fierro, The Iron House.
There
are far too many accounts of the ownership of the building. The
accurate one (and short verstion) is that Julius H. Toots sold the
building to Brazilian rubber baron Vaca Diez, who sold it to another
merchant, Francisco Borges. Eventually the building was bought by the
Spanish cauchero Anselmo del Aguila.24.
While
on vacation at Brussels and Paris, French-born industrialist cauchero
[rubber baron] Julius H. Toots first bought the Iron
House building in Paris in
1890 where he was visited the Paris International Exhibition, and
there, seeing the Iron House, Toots purchased the building and sent
it to Iquitos, intending to have it shipped to the town
of Madre de Dios, on the Mishaagua River; but the Amazon River that
season refused the destination, only allowing the Brazilian
registered ship to carry only as far as Iquitos where the house, in
pieces, was bought by a Brazilian rubber baron named Sr. Vaca Diez
and his business partner, Carlos Fermin
Fitzcarrald, a.k.a. “Fitzcarraldo.” The partners
split the house in two, one half going to the riverfront Malecon
Tarapaca. The
Malecon house was eventually acquired by merchant Francisco Borges.
The house “was neglected by its owner to the extent that with time
and lack of maintenance it became a ruin, and was disassembled and
sold as scrap. Finally, it was the Spanish rubber baron Anselmo del
Águila who purchased these materials and the house was assembled
where it stands [in Iquitos] today. The remaining half
is “The Iron House,” now dominating the corner of the Plaza de
Armas, where it stands lower but more forceful in its way than the
Neo-Gothic church at the corner of the next street. The Iron House's
steel beams and columns and metal sheets of commerce almost overpower
the quiet elegance of contemplation of the eternal the cathedral
provides. The Iron house is “There” and makes a statement all of
its own. The Iron House might not be pretty, but it is certainly
ugly.
Many buildings of the Rubber Boom era
have changed owners over the past century, but few seem ot have had
the variety of owners as the Iron House. The Iron House began as the
home of a rubber baron, and through the course of a century gone from
rich man's house to Chinese candy factory; from warehouse and
restaurant and grocery store to derelict hulk to social club; and now
to street-level shops selling tourist curios in one part, a pharmacy
in another.25,26,27.
25.C.f.
Mike Collis, Iquitos Times, Oct. 2012.
26.
Ibid. PROMPERU
27.http://www.reservas.net/alojamiento_hoteles/iquitos_sightseenstours.htm
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The Iron House, Iquitos, Peru
|
#129 Prospero St. Casa Pinasco.
 |
| Pinasco Model and Building |
Along the way from the church to the Iron House one sees some fine examples of Rubber Boom architecture. For example, next to the Iron House, from #129 one sees the neoclassical Casa Pinasco, built in 19XX. The lower facade of this two story building has on its support columns on concrete plinths vertical rows in series of sevens, plaster pateras, shallow ovoid dishes of indistinct white paint on coarse concrete stucco daubing, replacing the original red paint, the new now echoing faintly at best the rosette motifs on adjacent building such as the El Dorado hotel and the bank at the corner of the Plaza. At either end of the building are chamfered, bevelled panel wooden doors, each topped by an arch with hooded palmette keystone. Above, anchon “S” scroll wooden corbelled cantilevers with carved rosettes at the bottom of each side pretend to support the second story. The second story has balconettes and a symmetrical blend of neoclassical windows with shallow tympanums and fanlight arches, the centre window's arch segmented or elliptical, broken in the centre for protruding fleur de lis and acanthus feuron motif. Behind concrete balconettes of spindle-shaped balusters and rosette drain holes along the ledge are wooden louvered doors leading to residential space. Above, the pilaster columns are topped with cast concrete fleuron capitals. The roof is stepped molding, the comb-topped parapet roof has at its front centre a large medallion crest embossed with secular Chi Rho monogram, the initials “L.P.” for Luis Pinasco. Lining the roof the finials are shaped as incense-pot censers.
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#201 Prospero St. INEI Building.
To end Part One, across the street from
the Iron House at #201 Prospero is the INEI Building,
[The Instituto Nacional de Estadística e Informática ("National Institute of Statistics and Informatics") is a semi-autonomous Peruvian government agency which coordinates, compiles, and evaluates statistical information for the country. [wikipedia] Constructed in 19XX from the designs of X, of City and Nation, from 19XX – 19XX. The original owner used the building as a ….
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INEI Building
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As a relative latecomer to the
architectural legacy of Iquitos, the anachronistic INEI building, a
monument to The State is a nice example of Art Nouveau with Art Deco
trappings on a noeclassical huge box, its oblique angle entrance a
defiant challenge to all other conformist architecture.
Pedimented roof crest inside the
floriated tympanum has intials: BPP. Floriated, with pulvinas
scrolls.
The rusticated exteriour of the INEI
building is decorated with ellipitical label moldings over the
neoclassical rectangular windows.
Art Deco S scroll flying buttresses at
either side of the false roof rectangle above and around the
pediment.
Wrought iron grill over coffered wooden
door. Initials BPP in crest.
Incised Art Deco keystones within
elliptical frames over street-level windows.
*Maynas Province.
Peru is politically divided into:
- Regions or departments.
- Provinces.
- Districts.
** Edwin Villacorta, IPeru, 2012.
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