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"A Look at Hermes Mallea's Great Houses of Havana\nAn elegant new book celebrates the past century of Cuban architecture, from luxurious rooms by Jansen to a modern villa by Richard Neutra. AD speaks with the author about rediscovering the island's underappreciated design legacy\nManhattan society architect Thomas Hastings, creator of the urban palace that is now the Frick Collection, designed the 1914 Havana mansion of the Marqu\u00E9s de Avil\u00E9s. The entrance hall\u2014which architect-author Hermes Mallea calls \"one of the most beautiful spaces in Havana\"\u2014recalls that of an 18th-century Paris h\u00F4tel particulier.\nNow the residence of the British ambassador to Cuba, banker Pablo Gonz\u00E1lez de Mendoza's mansion contains a spectacular indoor swimming pool. Constructed in 1918 to the specifications of John H. Duncan, the architect of Grant's Tomb, the space is wrapped by glass walls that mimic latticework panels.\nAt the center of the former Presidential Palace in Havana is a monumental domed staircase of golden marble lit by a multitude of majestic windows. Completed in 1920, the building was designed by architects Paul Belau and Carlos Maruri, and features interiors outfitted by Tiffany Studios. Today it houses the Museo de la Revoluci\u00F3n.\nArchitects Evelio Govantes and F\u00E9lix Cabarrocas's Florentine Renaissance\u2013style mansion for sugar-plantation owner Juan de Pedro Bar\u00F3, built in the '20s, features a geometric Art Deco dining room. The Paris design firm Dominique decorated the space, which is anchored by a marble table with an inset plateau of mirror.\nThe 1930 Edificio Emilio Bacard\u00ED, the 12-story former headquarters of the rum company, has a polychrome lobby with exuberant Art Deco elements in candied-almond colors. Restored in 2001, it was designed by Esteban Rodr\u00EDguez Castells, Rafael Fern\u00E1ndez Ruenes, and Jos\u00E9 Men\u00E9ndez.\nThe U.S. ambassador's 1941 neoclassical-style residence was designed by architects Paul Franz Jaquet, Leland W. King Jr., and Frederick Larkin. The curved entrance of the 65-room mansion incorporates a porte cochere topped with a broad balcony. The last American ambassador departed Havana in 1961, and today the building is home to the Chief of the Mission of the U.S. Interests Section in Havana.\nThe living room of writer Ernest Hemingway's Cuban residence, La Vig\u00EDa, remains largely as it was during the novelist's lifetime. The curved chairs in the foreground are traditional Cuban seats known as butacas, and beside a deer trophy hangs a copy of Goya's circa-1790 portrait of the young Manuel Osorio Manrique de Zu\u00F1iga.\nThe Condesa de Revilla de Camargo's stunningly luxurious '20s mansion\u2014now the Museo de Artes Decorativas\u2014is a bit of Paris set down in the Caribbean. It was created for her brother, sugar baron Pepe G\u00F3mez Mena, by French architects Paul Viard and Marcel Dastugue and the design firm Jansen. Accents in the marble entrance hall include a blackamoor table and matching torch\u00E8res, which were fashionable in the '30s, and a landscape by 18th-century French artist Hubert Robert over a Louis XV commode.\nA Florencio Gelabert sculpture of a mermaid intertwined with a sea horse graces the fountain of the Hotel Riviera in the Vedado district. Designed by the Miami-based firm Polevitzky, Johnson and Associates, the Y-shaped 1956 hotel-and-casino complex was developed by American gangster Meyer Lansky, and its flamboyant interiors remain entirely intact.\nAt a mid-'50s chapel in Guatao, a mahogany spiral staircase is bathed in sunlight streaming through a honeycomb stained-glass window. Architect Olga Echezarreta Mulkay designed the reinforced-concrete structure.\nHans J. Wegner armchairs are among the midcentury Scandinavian furnishings of a modernist duplex home built for sisters Isabel and Olga P\u00E9rez Farfante in the '50s by architect Frank Mart\u00EDnez. The sisters\u2014one a dentist, the other a biologist\u2014shared the house with their families, and it remains in the hands of their descendants.\nIn this 1957 photograph, Florence Smith\u2014a former model who married the U.S. Ambassador to Cuba\u2014arranges roses in the reception hall of the ambassador's residence in Havana."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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