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THE ITALIAN LEGACY IN THE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC
280
ENDNOTES
1
Information acquired from the obituary in
Boletín de la Asoci-
ación Dominicana de Ingenieros y Arquitectos
(ADIA), June 1954, 37.
“The thesis for his final exam in 1925 was about the study of a
self-operated regulator, a self-regulator for pressure and fast shut
down” [sic]. The original diploma is kept by his descendants in
Santo Domingo.
2
Phrase extracted from biographical information provided by
his family.
3
Eight were held between 1928 and 1956, the last of them in
Dubrovnik, former Yugoslavia
.
See Chapter
Three of
Historia Crítica de la Arquitectura Moderna,
Estudio
paper-
back
Collection
(Barcelona: Editorial
Gustavo Gili, 1981).
4
Concurso para el Faro
a la memoria de Cristóbal Colón,
Albert Kesley, p. 155.Washington:
Unión Panamericana, 1931,
5
The announcement took place on April 20, 1929. A total of
456 proposals were submitted from 44 nations, representing four
continents (North America, South America, Europe, and Africa),
and 2,400 different drawings were displayed in different formats
and presentation techniques in the halls of Buen Retiro Palace
(April 28, 1929).
Concurso para el Faro a la memoria
de
Cristóbal
Colón,
Albert Kesley, Unión Panamericana, 1931, 155.
6
After Hurricane San Zenon made landfall on September 3,
1930, multiple reconstruction projects were undertaken through-
out the entire Dominican Republic, primarily in the capital city,
which was almost completely destroyed by the hurricane that
passed through its center. Del Toro Andújar presented ideas that
were not taken into consideration; among themwas the recovery
of the areas that were parallel to the walls in order to create a lin-
ear protection barrier for them. But rather than seen as based on
urban planning, his ideas were instead interpreted as political and
were consequently ignored to the extent that he had to go into
exile in Caracas, where he died on March 8, 1953. He was born on
July 1, 1892. Archives of Grupo Nuevarquitectura (GNA).
7
Joseph Lea Gleave was born in Cheshire, England, in 1907. He
was the Director of the Manchester School of Architecture, where
he had completed his own studies. He died on January 10, 1965
(photo in
Revista La Española
92,
vol. 3, October 1988, from the
Comisión Dominicana Permanente para la Celebración del Quinto
Centenario del Descubrimiento y Evangelización de América).
8
The architect Dunoyer De Segonzac, coauthor with Pierre
Dupré of the winning project for the Basilica Cathedral of
Nuestra Señora de la Altagracia in Higüey, 1944, in an interview
that he granted to us in 1982 (Grupo Nuevarquitectura Inc.—
GNA—together with architect Ornar Rancier), told us that the
dictator asked him for a similar temple but larger in size to be
built at that site. De Segonzac told them that the sanctuary was
actually in Higüey and not in Santo Domingo. Archives of GNA.
9
Manuel de Jesús Mañón Arredondo, “Viejos nombres de ter-
renos y lugares del Distrito Nacional,”
Listín Diario
, August 17,
1983, 11.
10
The English architect Joseph Lea Gleave, winner of the sec-
ond phase of the competition that took place in Rio de Janeiro
,
1931,
submitted the final plans in 1948. Archives of GNA.
11
See
Revista Municipal del Distrito
, July-August, 1942.
12
Giuseppe Rímoli, during informal conversations about the
construction of the National Palace, shared very intimate recol-
lections related to his closest relatives, who were Italian immi-
grants that had to leave each other behind, some remaining in
the Dominican Republic and others continuing on to Brazil. His
father, Humberto, who had arrived from Italy in 1935, worked
as the warehouse manager for the project, while his uncle César,
who had arrived from Brazil in 1922, arrived in the capacity of
D’Alessandro Lombardi’s personal secretary.
13
See Bernardo Vega,
Nazismo, Fascismo y Falangismo en la Repú-
blica Dominicana
(Santo Domingo: Fundación Cultural Domini-
cana, 1985).
14
Architect Romualdo García Vera had also worked with the
Czechoslovakian and naturalized American citizen Antonín Ne-
chodoma (1889-1928), as well as Benigno de Trueba y Suárez
(1887-1948) on the restoration and consolidation of the central
bell tower of the church of San Pedro Apóstol in San Pedro de
Macorís at the end of the 1920s. His body was found on Novem-
ber 30, 1935, apparently shot down while he was going to the
Diez building worksite, where he worked with De Trueba. Ar-
chives of GNA.
15
Manuel de Jesús Mañón Arredondo,
op. cit.
16
Silvia Hernández de Lasala, a Venezuelan architect and re-
searcher, in her educational text titled
Mulaussena
(Caracas, Ven-
ezuela: Editorial Ex-Libris, Fundación Pampero, 1990), which dis-
cusses the work by the influential family of Venezuelan architects
Antonio and Luis Malaussena in the chapter titled “La Represent-
ación Urbana del Proyecto de la Nueva Sede del Poder Ejecutivo”
(pp. 300-311), enables us to recall the similarities that arose from
the heritage of the site, the customary use of the site, and the
pre-existential roots for the case of Santo Domingo by analyzing
the relationship between the city and the building that is the site
of the national government. She writes:
“Even though the existing Miraflores Palace was not originally
designed as the head of the Government but instead the private
residence of Joaquín Crespo, it is possible to state that long before
1950 that building already served for both the common man and
for the one that aspired to hold the highest offices, as the symbol
of the highest level of power, represented in Venezuela by the
President of the Republic.”
17
See Chapter Four, titled “Atributos de la centralidad urbana:
los símbolos de las estructuras del Estado Burgués,” of Roberto
Segre Prando,
Las Estructuras Ambientales de América Latina
(Santo
Domingo: Ed. Siglo XXI, 1977), 134-135.
18
For more information on the subject, we recommend reading
the text
Arquitectura Dominicana en la Era de Trujillo,
written by
French architect Henry Gazón Bona (1909-1982), Major in the
National Army and prolific builder who designed a large number
of institutional buildings during the dictatorship of Trujillo. He
is responsible for, among many other notable works, the proto-
types for the “palaces” of the Dominican Party, “Trujillo’s Mon-
ument to Peace,” now called “Monumento a los Héroes de la
Restauración” (or simply “The Santiago Monument”); and Cas-
tillo del Cerro in San Cristóbal. A detailed list of the works from
that period may be consulted by reading Volumes I and II of
Las
Obras Públicas en la Era de Trujillo
(“La Era de Trujillo”: 25 años
de historia dominicana” Collection), from 1955, written by the
engineer Juan Ulises García Bonnelly.
19
See
Revista de la Secretaria de Interior, Policía y Marina
1, Sep-
tember 30, 1927.
20
In his superb work,
Historia Crítica de la Arquitectura Moderna,
(Barcelona: Editorial G.G.,
Colección Estudio
paperback,
1981) Kenneth Frampton in the sec-
ond part discusses “La
arquitectura y el Estado: Ideología y Representación. 1914-1943”
and states the following on page 212: