Jorge Ortiz-Colom
Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña
Urb. La Hacienda, AO17 Calle 54, Guayama, pr 00784-7114
[email protected] / Phone 787-615-5958 & 787-290-6617
2011 Vernacular Architecture Forum, Falmouth, Trelawny, Jamaica
THE PUERTO RICAN CASA CRIOLLA: IDENTITY AND DOMESTIC SPACE
The casa criolla (sometimes to be referred simply as casa) is the not
completely satisfactory denomination for a type of traditional dwelling
generally built all over Puerto Rico from the early nineteenth century up
to about 1930. These dwellings present a particular ordering of domestic
space that was remarkably uniform during its long period of significance,
and in a wide range of locations all over the island. The casa criolla was
an essential building block of towns and settlements during the
consolidation of a society and an economy fueled by the belated growth of
plantation agriculture[i]. A spatial pattern superseded after the first
third of the twentieth century, still numerous and important examples
abound around towns and the countryside to make them important objects of
historic conservation initiatives that with increasing insistence demand
their protection and adaptation to early-twenty-first-century daily life.
Most casas can be identified by their ample front verandas and, the
regular procession of doors leading off them, and a center-living-space
layout flanked by rooms on either side. They can be single-story raised
residences, two-story ones (less common), or placed on top of a
commercial/warehouse first level. Wood and hard materials are found usually
in varying proportions, though regional variations – keeping the basic
layout – have been discerned, probably reflecting the handiwork of specific
master builders or locally-significant cultural influences.
Paradoxically, the casas criollas have scarcely been studied in their
historical and cultural specificity and social meaning. Nevertheless, they
have been an object of the literary and artistic imagination and in
occasions they were invested with symbolic, identitarian values. Neither
much has been done to document the logic of their production: technology,
methods of assembly or their climatic behavior, though this author strongly
believes that they acted as venues for experimenting passive comfort
solutions that must be culled nowadays, when sustainability has become a
scientific and moral obsession.
This paper attempts to establish a largely hypothetical analysis of
the casa criolla as a system: structural, technical, socioeconomic,
historical and cultural components must be pondered, while a systemic view
should transcend the merely descriptive material generally found even in
ambitious studies like Carol Jopling's Puerto Rican Houses, published in
1988[ii]. Thus the evident subject of study should be reflected in the
mirror of history, technology, spatial analysis, urbanism, and others.
Then, after a critical scrutiny, the casa can be re-viewed in a more ample
perspective that can also illuminate its possible relevance to future
spacemaking decisions in Puerto Rico and similar tropical contexts.
The casa criolla is a relative latecomer in Puerto Rican architecture.
As a distinct type, its origins are in a sense unclear. Transplanted
Spanish house form, as seen in the older structures standing in San Juan,
derives from the juxtaposition of living spaces with little hierarchization
or differentiation among themselves. The organizing element is usually open
space: interior courtyards or (semi) public rights of way, and entry would
be indicated by somewhat more ornate detail around the entrance door, or
even by the fact that it was left open if people were inside[iii].
From the sixteenth to the early nineteenth century, San Juan
experimented with what amounts to the creolization of traditional southern
Spanish forms. From the limited graphic evidence of these times, both urban
houses based ultimately on the Roman insula type and walled compound type
houses were built: the former finally crowding out the latter as population
grew within the constraints of city walls and spaces reserved for military
maneuvers. Blocks were repeatedly subdivided until, by 1800, narrow and
deep lots became the norm as they were the most efficient allotment of
space.
Out of necessity, many courtyards were reduced to quarter-courtyards
with an L shaped gallery on two sides. The need to organize circulation on
two-story buildings, more and more common as the city densified, required a
logical position for the stairs, especially if several families were to
live together. This way a specific L-shape developed, with a tendency to
group service spaces (kitchen, wet areas, servants, storage) towards the
rear extension which became a sort of ell known as a martillo or "hammer".
A more ordered geometry of space became a necessity to assure functionality
of these deep houses and side or central hallways were defined, thus
beginning an internal spatial symmetry[iv].
Another possible origin of the casa criolla form is likely to be the
dwelling of propertied Anglo- and Franco-Caribbean estate owners and
merchants, which already by the mid-eighteenth century had developed, in
the houses located in their original islands, strong spatial order and
symmetry. With the economic incentives given since the 1780s for the
development of plantations, many planters from these islands, fleeing the
current turmoil that in part reflected European instability of the time,
arrived in Puerto Rico to try their hand in one of two major crops: sugar
and coffee. Some of these planters also brought their slaves, many skilled
in building trades. There was also an influx of European immigrants also
willing to try their hand at planting, and many of them intermarried with
the families of relocated planters, helping diffuse cultural trends. The
casa criolla's strong central living space may also have roots in European
center-hall layouts[v].
Another strong, possible antecedent – or at least, reinforcing pattern
during the heyday of the casa – could be the southern United States'
dogtrot house: several Louisiana and Mississippi examples have overall a
more than passing resemblance to casas' late-19th-century iterations. The
semienclosed space between the room modules of dogtrots has proportions
resembling those of the casa criolla's central living space. As Puerto
Rico, from 1830 onwards, had a strong commercial link to the growing United
States as an export market for sugar, many participants in the sugar
industry and trade began looking at America for a source of inspiration for
a more modern, progressive style of living that rejected what was perceived
as Spanish immobility and rigidity. It is in fact known that several
wealthy families imported whole precut houses from the U.S. and "Britain"
(most likely its colony of Canada)[vi].
The casa, unlike other, less ordered domestic geometries, provided for
a more "rational" organization of circulation. The lateral rooms were
invariably interconnected permitting privacy to the family members without
passing the living space. Two transversal elements – the front veranda and
the rear gallery – permitted circulation around the private, family domain
defined by the house's main rectangle: though the front veranda was also an
important, sometimes the most important, space for socializing with the
surrounding milieu.
However, unlike previous domestic forms, the casa criolla was able to
shift the locus of family living space from the outside – the inside
courtyard in more urban contexts, the so-called batey or informal front
yard[vii] in the countryside – to an ample, enclosed, symmetrical interior.
This interior space in turn was divided into a more public sala in front,
just behind the veranda, and an antesala or anteroom so called because in
high or two-story house with side stairs, after the length of the stair was
factored in, a person would enter the main living space through the back.
The antesala functioned variously as a more intimate room (sort of a
"family room" or parlor) or as an entry space when the stairs landed there:
but it was rarely used as a dining space. Dining rooms were normally at the
beginning of the martillo extension.
The previously mentioned martillo (ell) was a standard fixture in the
casas. It also grouped kitchens, sometimes bathrooms, servants' quarters
and miscellaneous storage. It overlooked the yard which devoid of its
previous centrality, became now a largely utilitarian garden where fruits,
herbs and small animals could be raised - or a place for stowing away
horses and carriages, though rear yards as landscaped gardens also existed.
Raising the house on stilts forming a large base beneath was a
practical consideration as it allowed the inside floor to remain dry,
reduce vermin and control xylophagic agents, both termites and woodrot. The
base's periphery was usually enclosed by a wall especially in the front
veranda side, and support posts would be selected from sturdier, resistant
woods like ausubo, moralon, higuerillo and others. Sometimes, posts would
be of brick or concrete.
But the most visually significant components of the casa are the
outside veranda and the inside living space. Both in many examples meld
effectively to read a total quasi-processional sequence from the street to
full recognition by the family as a valued guest. As previously mentioned
in this and other essays, the outside veranda[viii] was in most cases wide
enough to become a place to stay and observe the world outside from the
privacy clearly limited by the balustrades. Verandas also acted as a
cooling device for the more solid walls of the house proper, and
structurally as a means to rigidize the structure and in a sense break down
harsh winds. Balustrades, posts, lintels and floors would display
exuberance or solidity at times. A properly built veranda in an urban
context would satisfy municipal ornato regulations regarding the image that
houses and buildings were required to project.
The sala, the interior main space, would be also ceremonial with the
crowning element the partition known as the mediopunto or "halfway point",
usually dividing the space in roughly equal parts. The mediopunto is built
out in a variety of ways, with sawn, fretted, or lathed wooden pieces;
Neoclassical or fancy naturalistic curves; geometrical arrays, and even –
as in the Guayama region – operable jalousies. Mediopuntos permit visual
contact across sala and antesala, and on a few cases can even have some
storage or shelving integrated. As frequently seen, the Puerto Rican
version of the mediopunto acquires a visual predominance that images it as
a symbolic gateway[ix] that frames the family domain. No studies are known
to have studied the formal – and in a sense semiotic – values of the
mediopunto partition as the significant element of casa criolla interiors.
Casas criollas present complex passive ventilation systems: mechanisms used
include[x]
1. Dissipation of hot air via high ceilings and airspace between the
ceiling and roof cover, sometimes inside walls are interrupted before
they reach the ceiling
2. F lat, perforated exterior walls with double doors and windows
equipped with thin-slat jalousie panels; frequently transoms and oculi
3. Choice of heat-absorbing exterior materials
4. Structural logic: the "roofed box"
5. Truss-type, flexible roof structure, mostly side-gabled with gable-end
ventilators and usually covered with sheet metal (historically in many
cases with half-round 'Spanish" tile)
6. The use of the ell-type extensions as windscoops
7. Crawlspaces (sometimes usable) also provide an "air cushion" on the
bottom, besides evident hygienic advantages
The casa has a constructive logic that made easy and practical its
erection and maintenance. Fundamentally it is, structurally speaking, a box
on stilts - or rather two, one for the main volume and another for the ell.
Support is fundamentally borne by the exterior walls, which define a clear
footprint. Inside walls and additional stilting is built inside to
reinforce the structure and give it resistance to hurricanes and
earthquakes. The roof which is triangulated provides rigidity while
performing a climatic function as a heat dissipator, particularly after
corrugated iron became out of necessity the material of "choice" for roof
cladding. The verandas and galleries have their own support, and normally
serve as a sort of structural bracketing that further holds the ensemble
together[xi].
The major walls of the external rectangles can be of several
materials. There's wood, either as a post-and-beam rigid frame or as framed
walls. In later examples platform or (less commonly) balloon framing of
American inspiration may be encountered. Mampostería or irregular masonry,
solid brick of the soft, low-temperature-fired type – which requires
protective plastering – and at the end, concrete are hard materials used
for the master structural walls. In all cases the walls will be perforated
by regular tall openings for almost invariably double doors. Inside walls
are generally partitions, and in most cases all walls will be sheathed only
on the sala side, as a way to avoid creating spaces that could be a refuge
for pests like bees, other insects, bats or rats. However, it is common to
see metal sheathing applied to external wooden walls; these claddings
performed the double purpose of improving appearance and fire protection,
especially urgent in close urban quarters.
The casa is structurally defined by its peripheral rectangle, which
forms the support for the roof structure. The most common roof type is the
side gable one, which allows for more ease of construction than a hip roof;
also, adjustment is much easier than hip roofs, where the precision needed
in the angle cuts where the slopes meet permits less tolerance for
measuring discrepancies. Side gable roofs also allow for installing a
ventilating screen on the ends which improve hot-air extraction from the
attic. Roof cladding seen nowadays is mostly corrugated iron. Earlier
examples – some extant like the Machin house in San Lorenzo – used half-
round tiles, and some of the more rustic ones in the country have been
known to have been thatched, as photographic evidence shows.
Windows with high sills are not widely seen: to increase ventilation,
in openings in high places, it was preferable to use the so-called
antepecho which was a double door with a protective railing. Doors and
windows opening to the outside were of the casement type with integrated
narrow wooden operable jalousies accessible through a smaller door leaf
(known as a postigo) inserted in the larger leaf that covered half a door
opening. For additional security, some doors, especially those used for
access, could have outside solid doors that could be shut down. Inside
doors were also double, but normally paneled. Transoms are besides their
practical purpose as facilitators of wind movement used as decorative
accents. They are seen in glass, fretwork, metal, or wooden slats.
As a part of the landscape, the casa whether in an urban or rural
setting is positioned for visibility helped by its raised profile. So it
dominates visually the surroundings, which if anything has increased its
memorability. On towns it has defined whole streets creating a special
spatiality in the succession of verandas, raised on a base or as platforms
in second stories, while in the countryside it acts as a foil to the
exuberant nature and in haciendas (estates) it is the focal point of the
main estate complexes. Usually the veranda is placed strategically to
maximize views of the surroundings, and conversely the verandas are the
first element seen in countryside casas criollas.
The casa criolla form even transcended several social changes. After
the arrival of the United States domination in 1898, casas continued to be
built by and for the transforming propertied and professional classes: the
type even made its way to the new sugar company towns like Central Aguirre
in Salinas municipality, where it dominates in the housing built for upper
management in the northern part of the town. But eventually, cultural and
social modernization led to experimentation with more "modern" types of
housing. For a time – about 1910 to 1950, though earlier examples exist -
houses organized on aisles prevailed: these permitted penetrability from
front to back[xii]. Many divided public interiors – living and dining – on
opposite ends of this hall and in many cases the living space still
contained mediopuntos.
Modernization and mass urbanization, along with the increase in
poverty and violence as a result of a lopsided economic structure, probably
fueled an obsession with physical security, enclosure and will to isolation
from an uncertain external milieu. For this, certain American suburban
models with their dead-end sleeping spaces created a type perceived more in
tune with the times and the will to modernization pulled along with a
dramatic increase in consumption and visible standards of living. This
model was also the most profitable product as housing was appropriated from
artisanal maestros de obra to large industrial housing project developers.
Nevertheless, self-built housing, notwithstanding its incremental nature,
remains in Puerto Rico the preferred mode of housing production: slightly
over half of all houses are produced this way and during the present crisis
project houses have been difficult to sell. Self-built houses built in the
last 40 years have adopted, though, the modern model mostly as an element
of prestige. This has in fact virtually stopped the evolution of the casa
criolla into modernity, though some components have been visually
integrated, generally as appliqués. A few architects (including this
writer) have attempted in a way to integrate some casa criolla components
into modern projects, but most activity has geared to the recovery of
already-built casas.
The regularity and modularity of the casas, added to the
hierarchization and organization of spaces, has facilitated the adaptation
of many of them into institutions and offices. As Puerto Rican downtowns
evolve into business and service areas with comparatively few inhabitants,
office/institutional conversion – in many cases, to museums - has been the
saving grace of many of the houses. Even a few have been recovered as
residences.
Some casas have had historical significance as landmarks. These
include the birthplaces of public figures like Luis Muñoz Rivera in
Barranquitas or José Celso Barbosa's in Bayamón, and another associated
with the Canales family in Jayuya (a 1991 reconstruction of a ca. 1880
hacienda house), which begat several politicians, patriots, and
journalists. Few are associated with events: the one where the 1868 Lares
uprising was promulgated was demolished in 1900 to build a marketplace in
its site, in turn demolished in the 1970s, and the original Canales house
previously mentioned was a staging place for the ill-fated Jayuya rebellion
in 1950. However, many turning points in Puerto Rican history are not yet
sufficiently linked by researchers to their possible venues.
As an outgrowth of major societal transformations, which heralded the
heyday of an agrarian export economy which spawned a social class that
produced significant cultural oeuvre, casas have made their way into
literature and other arts. In several literary works it has become a
character of sorts: several of them frame the lifestyles of major
characters in Manuel Zeno-Gandia's El Negocio (The Business)[xiii], a 1895
novel set in the bustling city of Ponce. Leocadia's romantic interior
garden and, Galante's arrogant veranda of his large house, sited
incongruously in an emerging poor neighborhood, alternate with the static
elegance of the house of Andújar, a wealthy merchant who soullessly wills
in marriage her daughter away for economic convenience, only to find her
snatched by her true, honest but poor lover.
Casas act not only as settings, but also as foils of personalities in
Enrique Laguerre's first novel, La llamarada (The Flame)[xiv], published in
1939, where the rustic, somewhat faded presence of the Alzamoras' Santa
Rosa estate, a wooden hip-roofed estate casa, contrasts with the
Neoclassical, French-inspired and presumptuous elegance of Palmares, the
Moreau estate and seat of a wealthy family of cane growers. The not-so-well
but authentically patriotic Alzamora family is presented as a model of
virtuousness reinforced by the grand spatiality - sala and verandas - of
Santa Rosa. Curiously, the house that inspired the Palmares or Moreau
estate still stands and, refurbished after abandonment and a fire, is used
as a museum and cultural facility.
The Manuel Rojas coffee estate (now a ruin) was set as the scene of
most of René Marqués's 1965 drama Mariana o el Alba (Mariana or the
Sunrise), a fictionalization of a major event of the Sept. 23, 1868 Lares
uprising known as the Grito de Lares. Much of the planning and discussion
of the conspirators takes place in the sala of the house, cautiously
described by Marqués and where the architecture and furniture of the room
play a defining part in the storyline.
Another memorable casa, nowadays a withered ruin, is the Usera country
house in Santa Isabel, venue of a part of the feature movie Lo que le pasó
a Santiago (Whatever happened to Santiago), an U.S. Academy Award ("Oscar")
nominee in the foreign-language category in 1989. A romantic scene between
Santiago, a recent retiree searching for "meaning in life", and Angelina, a
woman that crosses in his life, takes place in the sala of this rambling
wooden house built in 1912.
The transition between the nostalgic ambience seen in that scene and
the reality of decay and possible demolition is the predicament seen by
many Puerto Rican casas criollas. Symbols of the lifestyle of a propertied
gentry and of its middle-class emulators in a subaltern, agrarian society,
they as other privileged habitats show the potential of technical and
cultural achievement of their times. As a distinct product, in Puerto Rico
amply distributed and showing formal invention and variation within a
defined spatial model, they represent a particular form of vernacular
building adapted to societal and climatic needs. The casa criolla's assets
more than justify its redefinition and permanence of surviving examples
meeting 21st century needs, and more than as museums or cultural venues.
Saving these houses, along with other representative examples of Puerto
Rico's habitat, is a challenge that is not yet adequately addressed through
the regulatory establishment[xv], or the specific temperament of the modern
building professions.
jo
-----------------------
[i] References include history books by Francisco Scarano and Fernando
Pico, possibly other historians. (Under selection at this time.)
[ii] Jopling, Carol F. Puerto Rican Houses in Sociohistorical Perspective.
Knoxville, University of Tennessee Press, 1988.
[iii] Castro-Arroyo, Maria de los Angeles. Arquitectura en San Juan
Bautista de Puerto Rico (siglo XIX). San Juan: University of Puerto Rico
Press, 19??, Sepulveda Rivera, Anibal. San Juan: Historia ilustrada de su
desarrollo urbano. San Juan, Carimar, 1989.
[iv] This is the hypothesis sustained by Jorge Rigau in his book Puerto
Rico 1900 (New York, Rizzoli, 1992, pp. ). He establishes San Juan
townhouses as the possible root of the so-called ABA layout that he later
expounds analyzing examples in San Germán, which he studied in 1983.
[v] This seems to be the case when studying contemporary descriptions of
estate houses, and also illuminating are the sketches made between 1822 and
1823 by French naturalist Auguste Plée. Several drawings on the heavily
French-influenced southeastern coast – specifically the towns of Guayama
and Patillas – show houses built or under construction with apparent
elements present in casas criollas. See Alegría, Ricardo E. "Los dibujos
del naturalista francés Augusto Plée entre 1821 y 1823." Revista del
Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña 68 (April-June 1975), pp. 21-40.
[vi] For British imports, see Cox, Emma D., Este inmenso comercio: las
relaciones comerciales entre Puerto Rico y Gran Bretana en el siglo XIX.
San Juan: University of Puerto Rico and Instituto de Cultura
Puertorriqueña, 20??, pp.
[vii] I have studied the batey as a spatial pattern in two papers: Batey,
Stoop and Veranda, read in the 2006 VAF Conference in New York City, and
The Batey which Refused to Die, read in the 2008 Puerto Rican Studies
Association Conference, San Juan, Puerto Rico (both unpublished).
[viii] See Batey, Stoop and Veranda, the paper mentioned in the previous
note. Also, though more referent to the 20th-century post-criolla
vernacular house in the Santurce district of San Juan, another recent and
excellent essay in book form: Quiles, Edwin. La ciudad de los balcones. San
Juan: University of Puerto Rico, 2009.
[ix] About the symbolism of the gateway, William R. Lethaby's description
remains a classic. See his book Architecture, Mysticism and Myth. London:
Percival and Company, 1892 (facsimilar reproduction by Dover Publications,
Mineola, New York).
[x] I have analyzed some of these elements further in an unpublished paper
presented in a conference organized by the Puerto Rico Environmental
Quality Board in Ponce in 2001.It was titled Patrimonio y sostenibilidad:
las lecciones de la historia (Heritage and Sustainability: Lessons from
History.) It draws from extensive field observations done informally and
formally since the middle 1970s when I was still a university student. I
also was a collaborator in Professor Jopling's fieldwork which was done
mostly in early 1979. (See note 2.)
[xi] These descriptions come fundamentally from a variety of sources and
extensive personal fieldwork, especially from 1986 onwards. Due to
considerations of brevity, the main traits of the casa criolla are
presented in a somewhat condensed form which makes enumeration of sources –
books, articles, photographs on personal and agency files, and reports made
mostly for the Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña – difficult at this
moment.
[xii] Jorge Rigau discusses some examples of this type. See Puerto Rico
1900, pp.
[xiii] Zeno Gandía, Manuel. El negocio. San Juan: Instituto de Cultura
Puertorriqueña, 1979. (First edition published in New York City in 1922,
nearly thirty years after its completion.)
[xiv] Laguerre, Enrique A. La llamarada. San Juan, Editorial Cultural,
several editions.
[xv] The tendency for many years was to privilege landmarks and Spanish-
colonial survivors. This was seen up to about 1990 in most Puerto Rico
historic-preservation laws and regulations, until in 1991 the Ponce
historic zone was promulgated. Then there was a true opening of protection
for other vernacular and cultivated architectural expressions.
