Casa Salazar-Candal ( en, Salazar–Candal House) is a historic building located on the southeast corner of Isabel and Mayor Cantera streets in

Ponce, Puerto Rico Ponce (, , , ) is both a city and a municipality on the southern coast of Puerto Rico. The city is the seat of the municipal government. Ponce, Puerto Rico's most populated city outside the San Juan metropolitan area, was founded on 12 August 1 ...

, in the city's historic district. The building dates from 1911. It was designed by the architect

Blas Silva Blas C. Silva Boucher (2 February 1869 - 27 January 1949) was a twentieth-century Puerto Rican engineer from Ponce, Puerto Rico. He is credited with the creation of the Ponce Creole architectural style, even though he was trained as an enginee ...

. The architecture consists of 19th

Classical revival Neoclassical architecture is an architectural style produced by the Neoclassical movement that began in the mid-18th century in Italy and France. It became one of the most prominent architectural styles in the Western world. The prevailing style ...

, Art Nouveau and

Spanish Revival The Spanish Colonial Revival Style ( es, Arquitectura neocolonial española) is an architectural stylistic movement arising in the early 20th century based on the Spanish Colonial architecture of the Spanish colonization of the Americas. In th ...

architectural styles. Today the Salazar–Candal Residence houses the Museum of the History of Ponce.

History

Casa Salazar was designed in 1911 by Blas Silva Boucher as the residence of Dr. Guillermo Salazar Palau and his wife Sara Isabel Rivera Carbonell. The house was a Guillermo Salazar Palua's wedding gift to his wife Sara Isabel. Later, it became the headquarters of the '' Alianza Nacionalista de Ponce'' (Ponce Nationalist Alliance) and later on yet, the headquarters for the ''Liga Progresista de Ponce'' (Ponce Progressive League), an organization seeking to preserve and advance the social, cultural, and commercial interest of the city during the first half of the twentieth century.''Una joya incomparable de Ponce:La historia de la Ciudad Señorial, desde sus orígenes mismos en 1692, está contenida en el Museo de la Historia de Ponce.''
El Nuevo Dia. Guaynabo, Puerto Rico. 1 February 2009. Retrieved 8 July 2012.

Significance

Casa Salazar-Candal is one of a group of stylistically eclectic houses built in Ponce between 1900 and 1915. Designed by architect Blas C. Silva Bouscher in 1911, the building reflects an emerging tendency to incorporate freely diverse and competing architectural motifs. The facade is distinctly rendered in

roccoco Rococo (, also ), less commonly Roccoco or Late Baroque, is an exceptionally ornamental and theatrical style of architecture, art and decoration which combines asymmetry, scrolling curves, gilding, white and pastel colours, sculpted moulding, ...

and moorish detailing to emphasize its bifunctional character as a home and an office respectively. The portion of the structure designed to shelter the family is refined, delicately ornamented and asymmetrical. It utilizes a balcony, raised and detached from the street as a transitional zone between the public and the private sphere.Mariano G. Coronas Castro, Certifying Official; Felix Julian del Campo, State Historian; and Roberto Sackett, State Architectural Historian, Puerto Rico Historic Preservation Office. (San Juan, Puerto Rico) April 11, 1988. In ''National Register of Historic Places Inventory – Nomination Form''. United States Department of the Interior. National Park Service. (Washington, D.C.) Page 3. Listing Reference Number 88000663: Salazar-Candal House. June 9, 1988. In contrast to the refinement and gentility of the house expressed by its fluted corinthian columns, floral surrounds and composite entablure, the office is fashioned as a moorish garrison exhibiting a crenelated

parapet A parapet is a barrier that is an extension of the wall at the edge of a roof, terrace, balcony, walkway or other structure. The word comes ultimately from the Italian ''parapetto'' (''parare'' 'to cover/defend' and ''petto'' 'chest/breast'). ...

, horseshoe arches with simplified surrounds and planar surfaces. The building plane of the office is pushed forward to meet the sidewalk for public access in order to further express its utilitarian function. Master craftsman Elias Concepcion has been credited with the execution of the interior finishes. His handling of the ornamental elements ranges from the curvilinear and stylized floral motifs present in the stained glass of the double doors, to the rectilinear wood screen—reminiscent of the arts and craft movement – dividing the

foyer A lobby is a room in a building used for entry from the outside. Sometimes referred to as a foyer, reception area or an entrance hall, it is often a large room or complex of rooms (in a theatre, opera house, concert hall, showroom, cinema, etc. ...

from the living room. As with the exterior, the interior is a mixture of distinct stylistic elements. The vestibule's repousse sheet metal ornamentation reflects the roccoco treatment of the exterior, at once maintaining an image of opulence and refinement for the visitor while creating a transitional device for the predominantly planar interior surfaces. Many highstyle interiors of the beginning of the 20th century in the Ponce and Yauco region have been attributed to Elias Concepcion due to his sophisticated integration and subtle resolution of an eclectic vocabulary.

Physical appearance and description

The house is located on a plot of land measuring 31 meters (on Isabel Street), by 13 meters (on Mayor Street), to the South 45 meters and to the East 22 meters. It was built in 1911 in reinforced concrete, brick and stone, and its roof was partly built in concrete and partly in timber with corrugated iron sheets.Mariano G. Coronas Castro, Certifying Official; Felix Julian del Campo, State Historian; and Roberto Sackett, State Architectural Historian, Puerto Rico Historic Preservation Office. (San Juan, Puerto Rico) April 11, 1988. In ''National Register of Historic Places Inventory – Nomination Form''. United States Department of the Interior. National Park Service. (Washington, D.C.) Page 2. Listing Reference Number 88000663: Salazar-Candal House. June 9, 1988. The house is L-shaped in plan and consists of a main body where the public spaces and bedrooms are located. An extension, known commonly as the "martillo", completes the "L" shape and is where the kitchen and service quarters are located. The facade employs classical elements mixed with moorish influenced details It is divided in three main sections; an ample

balcony A balcony (from it, balcone, "scaffold") is a platform projecting from the wall of a building, supported by columns or console brackets, and enclosed with a balustrade, usually above the ground floor. Types The traditional Maltese balcony ...

that corresponds to the family dwelling flanked by two enclosed spaces used formerly as the medical offices of the original owners. Access to this commercial space is directly from the street. The main doors are of a particular design in using the lobulated arch as a motif. These doors have stained glass panels in the ' art nouveau' style. The residence balcony is raised over a rusticated-stone plinth. It is divided into four bays by the use of five paired and fluted corinthian columns. An Italian-influenced balustrade serves as the balcony railing. A cornice, neoclassical in style, runs the whole of the house's facade as well as the crenelated parapet over the office space. The staircase leading to the 'piano nobile' of the house is enhanced and accentuated in the parapet by an elaborated 'cartouche' indicating the date of construction of the house. From the street, through the staircase and the main entrance, a foyer leads to an interior courtyard from which all the spaces of the house are distributed. Special features of the interior are the stained glass panels in the living room, showing a strong moorish influence in its form (lobulated arches) and its colour. The doors have louvered panels and stained glass insets. The living room, the studio and the bedrooms have pressed

tin Tin is a chemical element with the symbol Sn (from la, stannum) and atomic number 50. Tin is a silvery-coloured metal. Tin is soft enough to be cut with little force and a bar of tin can be bent by hand with little effort. When bent, t ...

ceilings.

References

External links

* {{NRHP in Ponce, Puerto Rico Houses completed in 1911 National Register of Historic Places in Ponce, Puerto Rico Ponce Creole architecture 1911 establishments in Puerto Rico Art Nouveau houses Salazar-Candal Art Nouveau architecture in Puerto Rico Historic house museums in Puerto Rico

History

Significance

Physical appearance and description

See also

References

Further reading

External links