Casa Oppenheimer (English: Oppenheimer House) is a historic house 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 ...

, designed in 1913 by famed Puerto Rican architect Alfredo B. Wiechers. The house is unique among other historic structures in historic Ponce for its skillful incorporation of front gardens in a very limited urban space.Mariano G. Coronas Castro, Certifying Official; Hector M. Santiago, State Architectural Historian, Puerto Rico Historic Preservation Office. (San Juan, Puerto Rico) 14 August 1987. ''Oppenheimer House.'' 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 87001824. 29 October 1987. The historic building is located at 47 Salud Street, in the city's historic district, at the northwest corner of Salud and Aurora streets. The house is also known as Casa del Abogado (House of the Attorney). In April 2019, the house was turned into ''Casa Mujer'' by MedCentro, a women's health business concern.

History

The Oppenheimer House is one of Ponce's most distinctive residential structures. It was designed in 1913 for

Doña Don (; ; pt, Dom, links=no ; all from Latin ', roughly 'Lord'), abbreviated as D., is an honorific prefix primarily used in Spain and Hispanic America, and with different connotations also in Italy, Portugal and its former colonies, and Croatia ...

Isabel Oppenheimer-de Santiago by one of Puerto Rico's foremost early 20th century architects, Alfredo Weichers. Two years earlier, in 1911, he had built '' Casa Serralles,'' which today is home to the

Museum of Puerto Rican Music A museum ( ; plural museums or, rarely, musea) is a building or institution that cares for and displays a collection of artifacts and other objects of artistic, cultural, historical, or scientific importance. Many public museums make thes ...

. Mr. Weichers left Puerto Rico to study architecture in

Barcelona, Spain Barcelona ( , , ) is a city on the coast of northeastern Spain. It is the capital and largest city of the autonomous community of Catalonia, as well as the second most populous municipality of Spain. With a population of 1.6 million within ci ...

, and returned to Ponce where he built various structures in the Spanish-Art Nouveau style. Weichers designed many of the mansions of Ponce's aristocratic society of his time. The Oppenheimer residence is one such structure. Architecturally, the house is the result of an artful combination of elements from the contemporary modernist movement and the simpler townspeople's building traditions used in the hot southern coast of Puerto Rico. Prominent in this property is the used of a

chamfer A chamfer or is a transitional edge between two faces of an object. Sometimes defined as a form of bevel, it is often created at a 45° angle between two adjoining right-angled faces. Chamfers are frequently used in machining, carpentry, fu ...

ed front entrance gate. This front entrance into the property follows the chamfered pattern delineated by the city street at the corner of Salud and Aurora streets. This designed responded to city ordinances which mandated the incorporation of

ed corners in urban city lots.Mariano G. Coronas Castro, Certifying Official; Hector M. Santiago, State Architectural Historian, Puerto Rico Historic Preservation Office. (San Juan, Puerto Rico) 14 July 1987. ''Oppenheimer House.'' 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 87001824. 29 October 1987. This design, along with the use of a mirror-image chamfered design of the front of the house proper, provided the property with a significant amount of frontal garden space, uncommon in city lots just two blocks from Ponce's main Plaza, as is the case of this house.Mariano G. Coronas Castro, Certifying Official; Hector M. Santiago, State Architectural Historian, Puerto Rico Historic Preservation Office. San Juan, Puerto Rico. 14 August 1987. ''Oppenheimer House.'' In, ''National Register of Historic Places Inventory - Nomination Form''. United States Department of the Interior. National Park Service. Washington, D.C. Section 8: "Significance." Page 3. Listing Reference Number 87001824. 29 October 1987.

Significance

The residence is "one of the best examples in Ponce of the Puerto Rican adaptation of the architecture of the Barcelona School, and forms an integral part of the series of late 19th and early 20th century grand houses which defines the unique urban character of the center of Ponce."

Architecture

The house is a raised, one-

storey A storey (British English) or story (American English) is any level part of a building with a floor that could be used by people (for living, work, storage, recreation, etc.). Plurals for the word are ''storeys'' (UK) and ''stories'' (US). T ...

, brick and masonry residential structure on the northwest corner of Salud and Aurora streets, in Ponce's Historic Zone. It is oriented on a diagonal axis with respect to the street corner. The main facade of the house face the street corner. At both ends of this frontal facade, the house plan turns an angle so that the front facade becomes first perpendicular and then parallel to the corresponding side street. The property is surrounded by a 4-foot plastered masonry wall with an 18-inch high

wrought iron Wrought iron is an iron alloy with a very low carbon content (less than 0.08%) in contrast to that of cast iron (2.1% to 4%). It is a semi-fused mass of iron with fibrous slag Inclusion (mineral), inclusions (up to 2% by weight), which give it a ...

railing above. The small, diagonal front chamfered gate is also built in wrought-iron. The frontal facade consists of a concave shape and incorporates a

podium A podium (plural podiums or podia) is a platform used to raise something to a short distance above its surroundings. It derives from the Greek ''πόδι'' (foot). In architecture a building can rest on a large podium. Podiums can also be used ...

porch, Ionic columns, a recessed

loggia In architecture, a loggia ( , usually , ) is a covered exterior gallery or corridor, usually on an upper level, but sometimes on the ground level of a building. The outer wall is open to the elements, usually supported by a series of columns ...

, and a

cornice In architecture, a cornice (from the Italian ''cornice'' meaning "ledge") is generally any horizontal decorative moulding that crowns a building or furniture element—for example, the cornice over a door or window, around the top edge of a ...

with a battlement

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'). Whe ...

above. The raised

porch incorporates concrete

balustrade A baluster is an upright support, often a vertical moulded shaft, square, or lathe-turned form found in stairways, parapets, and other architectural features. In furniture construction it is known as a spindle. Common materials used in its con ...

s the full length of the balcony. The loggia porch is reached from the front gardens via a wide masonry stairway. The loggia incorporates five bays that establish the central section of the frontal concave facade. The front is highlighted by five

arch An arch is a vertical curved structure that spans an elevated space and may or may not support the weight above it, or in case of a horizontal arch like an arch dam, the hydrostatic pressure against it. Arches may be synonymous with vaul ...

ed windows.Mariano G. Coronas Castro, Certifying Official; Hector M. Santiago, State Architectural Historian, Puerto Rico Historic Preservation Office. (San Juan, Puerto Rico) 14 August 1987. ''Oppenheimer House.'' 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 87001824. 29 October 1987.

Notes

References

External links

* * Plastica, Revista de la Liga de Arte de San Juan, No. 15, Vol. 2. Sept. 1986. * Archivo Historico de Ponce, Plans of houses designed by Alfredo Weichers. * Gran Enciclopedia de Puerto Rico, Arquitectura. {{DEFAULTSORT:Casa Oppenheimer Houses completed in 1913 National Register of Historic Places in Ponce, Puerto Rico 1913 establishments in Puerto Rico Ponce Creole architecture Art Nouveau houses

Oppenheimer Oppenheimer is a surname. Notable people with the surname include: In arts and media * Alan Oppenheimer (born 1930), American film actor * Andrés Oppenheimer (born 1951), Argentine author and journalist known for his analysis of Latin American p ...