Thursday, January 24, 2013

Iquitos, Peru: Architectural Walking Tour (Part One)


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.



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


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.

Beginning with the Jesuit settlement of the 16th century and the re-establishment of Iquitos in 1757 the city gradually grew, till: “In July 1802 the General Command of Maynas created the Bishopric of Maynas. Its first bishop was a Spanish loyalist, Fr. Hipólito Sánchez Rangel, OFM, who made the first census of Iquitos, placing the population at 81 souls.”2.
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.



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

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.




War memorial in the centre of Plaza de Armas, Iquitos.

Most 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
 6.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plaza_de_Armas

War memorial plaque


 
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: 


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." 


    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
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.

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:

“That there should be no features about a building which are not necessary for convenience, construction or propriety. Second, that all ornament should consist of the essential construction of the building.12. 12. http://www.artscrafts.org.uk/roots/pugin.html

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.



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.


Standard Church interior floor plan

Cathedral Interior
The church interior has art work by some of Peru's most well-known painters, especially the altarpiece triptych by Cesar Calvo de Araujo.

    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.

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.




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.

Archivolt arch over church door


 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.


Stone aggregate foundation; compare to azulejos
 
A brief note that azulejo does not refer to blue stones. The word derives from Arabic.
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.'

The architecture of God and that of His competitor-- Money-- in the early 20th century when Iquitos was entering its glory years was simultaneously Gothic Revival at one corner of the Plaza de Armas, and high industrial design of prefabricated steel sheets, as one sees at opposite end of the Plaza de Armas: the Iglesia Matriz de Iquitos; and the Iron House. But first, one sees on the same block as the church two post-Rubber Boom but aesthetically harmonic buildings, both two story buildings with the upper floors attempting a subtle recreation of a more refined time, especially visible in the balconies and arches.


#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….

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.



Putumayo Street Buildings

 
#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.

Across Prospero Street (originally Jirón Lima) one sees Iquitos' most famous building.
 



La Casa de Fierro (or) The Iron House

At the SE corner of Próspero and Putumayo streets across from the Plaza de Armas is La Casa de Fierro, the Iron House, designed in 1860 by the French architect Gustave Eiffel, famous for the Eiffel Tower in Paris. The components were fabricated at Les Forges D'Aiseau in Belgium. The Iron House began its public existence at “The Exposition Universelle of 1889.” [The Exposition] was a World's Fair held in Paris, France from 6 May to 31 October 1889. It was held during the year of the 100th anniversary of the storming of the Bastille, an event traditionally considered as the symbol for the beginning of the French Revolution.22. 22.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exposition_Universelle_%281889%29



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




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.


Pinasco Building


#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 ….


INEI Building

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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