The daily newspaper Diario de Noticias has been published in Lisbon since 1864. This mid-twentieth century building, designed by the architect Porfirio Pardal Monteiro, won the Portuguese ‘Premio Valmor’ architectural prize in 1940. Located on the prestigious Avenida da Liberdade in the Rossio district, it united in one location all of the various functions of the newspaper, from editorial all the way to subscriptions, printing and distribution. It was listed as a National Monument in 1986. Note the embedded black tower on the left, complete with a lantern at the top, together suggesting a lighthouse. Recently it has been converted into luxury apartments.
The Edificio López Serrano Apartments in Havana, Cuba.
We are fortunate to have a guest post from author and travel blogger Will Linsdell. He has published several books about rail travel and other subjects which you can see on the Hornbill Publishing website (https://hornbillpublishing.co.uk/). Will is the creator of the Wilbur’s Travels blog: (https://wilburstravels.com/) which can take you almost anywhere in the seventy countries he has visited thus far. Among these is Havana, Cuba where his post comes from.
I have always appreciated an aesthetically pleasing building and my appreciation of Art Deco was heightened when I visited Miami in the early 2000s.
Although I don’t exactly go out of my way to spot certain buildings, if they happen to be located where I find myself I will go out of my way to photograph them.
Havana has some fine examples of neoclassical buildings and besides this has a few Art Deco jewels, including the López Serrano building.
The construction of the building was promoted by José Antonio López Serrano, a publisher who ran La Moderna Poesía, once Cuba’s most famous bookstore which stood for over a hundred years but sadly is a building no longer in use and fading fast.
See the Tripadvisor page about La Moderna Poesía here.
The López Serrano building was designed by the architect Ricardo Mira in 1929 (in 1941 he also designed La Moderna Poesia bookstore), and was constructed in 1932 when it became the tallest residential building in Cuba.
Centrally located above the ten stories of the main building sits a tower of four apartments that are supported by ten steel columns.
I took the photo that you see below from our high-rise hotel with fabulous views of the city stretch of Caribbean Ocean known as the Malecon.
An Art Deco tower by the beach.
Whilst the building (like much of Havana’s fine period architecture) is looking slightly worn, it is still a fabulous sight and worthy of any skyline.
The Havana skyline with the Edificio López Serrano far left
One interesting if not entirely pleasant fact about the building regards congressman, senator, political activist, government critic and presidential candidate Eduardo Chibás.
Eduardo was living on the fourteenth floor penthouse at the time that he committed suicide by shooting himself in August 1951, just after finishing his political broadcast on CMQ Radio and a day after his 44th birthday.
Formerly part of the nationwide White Tower Hamburger chain founded in 1926, this one in the city of Albany, the state capital of New York, had been a dance hall and nightclub from the 1980s. Since the 1990s it had been called the Fuze Box and was home to Punk and Hard Rock. Located on Central Avenue, it is a compact mix of streamline and skyscraper looks. Well proportioned and well coloured, with chrome strips for detail, it closed in March 2020 because of the pandemic and its owners put it up for sale in August 2020.
Here is a six storey apartment block located at Rua do Salitre 175 in the Rato district of central Lisbon. Its key colours are brown and white, and it has angular bay window towers rising from the third to fifth floors. Another feature is the carved, stone relief panels of flower arrangements which give a nod to the French designers who evolved them. These can be seen above the central entrance then between the windows on the floors above.
Flower arrangement above the main entrance.More carved flowers and leaves.
A diverse yet harmonious collection of decorative elements.
We are pleased to have a second guest post for this blog from the Durban Art Deco Society. Durban is South Africa’s third largest city and has many Art Deco buildings.
Situated at 124 Margaret Mncadi Avenue, Durban’s 1933 Victoria Mansions were designed by E S Cornelius. Victoria Mansions is an apartment building facing the bay across the Victoria Embankment. It has vertical pilasters with fluting which rise through an arcuated first floor. The facade is richly decorated with geometric patterns and an array of fantastical animal figures. Apart from dolphins and winged lions, it also has a vulture feature on the side panel of the entrance. The glazed tile panel over the entrance is a nostalgic memento of the days of the great Union Castle mail ships that called at Durban for so many years.
These distinctive, sweeping curves belong to Clube Náutico Capibaribe, a sports club located on the Avenida Conselheiro Rosa e Silva, in the Aflitos district of Recife, a seaside city in in the northeast of Brazil. Initially a rowing club, hence the name, it is best known for its football team, often abbreviated to Náutico, which plays in the national Série B league.
Constructed for International Stores in 1935, Mitre House In Brighton was designed by J. Stanley Beard & Bennett. Located in Western Road, it is mixed use with shops below and a six-storey block of flats above. As with many apartment blocks in England from this time there is a fine interplay between the brick and stone facings. The balconies are all faced with stone and rise from the second floor.
The southernmost region of Portugal is known as the Algarve, and this is where we find the city of Loulé. The Clinica Do Carmo was located at Avenida José da Costa Mealha 94 and had a variety of rectilinear decorative elements on its façade. Sadly, Global Art Deco has been informed that this building no longer exists. We will leave the photos for reference, particularly as it was an attractive example of Portuguese Art Deco.
We are privileged to have a guest post for this blog from the Durban Art Deco Society. Durban is South Africa’s third largest city and has many Art Deco buildings.
The Surrey Mansions is one of the great Art Deco buildings of Durban. Located at 323 Currie Road, it was designed by W E Langton & W B Barboure, and completed in 1934. It is an eight-storey apartment building with detailing of imagination and sensitivity. Block like ground and first floors, rounded corners up to a squared off top floor and with fluted giant order pilasters rising up the entire height. Richly varied stucco reliefs with winged lions high up. Excellent resolution of geometry in the use of rectangular and curved forms.
The Cinearte cinema, at 2 Largo de Santos, was constructed in 1938, and features some details which give it an industrial look. Designed by the architect Raul Rodrigues Lima, it ran as a cinema for over four decades, closing in 1981. It was reborn in 1990 as a theatre named ‘A Barraca’ or ‘The Shack’. ‘A Barraca’ has now been successfully bringing a new theatrical dimension to the Santos district for thirty years. Throughout the 1930s and 1940s Raul Rodrigues Lima designed a number of Portuguese cinemas, as well as courts and prisons.
Global Art Deco 