A Mansion in Cojimar, Havana Saved by Art for Boys & Girls
HAVANA TIMES — In my town there is a large old house that was built in the 1930s. It belonged to a man with the last name More. He owned land in Cojímar and was the first person in the town to have a television. He used to invite his neighbors over to enjoy the programming in his home.
What I’m telling you may sound familiar, because on a previous occasion I spoke about this mansion. At that time, there were plans to turn it into a cultural center for the town, but that project never materialized due to a lack of materials to restore the house.
This is a house that has gone through several stages since the original owners stopped living there after emigrating in the 1960s. It was a music school, then became the Reinaldo Cruz basic secondary school, and many young people from Cojímar have very fond memories of their time there; that was from the 1970s until well into the 1980s. In the 1990s it became an elementary school called Arsenio Escalona. It is located at 31st Street and Maceo. After 2000, it was closed as a school and an office of the community architect was opened there, but that did not last long. Then it was closed again and left abandoned.
At present, an Italian organization called COSPE, together with the Cuban ‘Centro Félix Varela,’ took over the house a few months ago for a cultural project called ‘Creative Zones.’ The house had already reached an advanced state of deterioration, and part of the garage space had even been taken over to create a dwelling. Now it is going to be rescued and restored for these activities. That is good, so that we do not keep losing buildings everywhere in our city of Havana—and even better if it is for cultural purposes, for the children and artists of the town.
Although the house was assigned to the project a few months ago, I still haven’t seen a single sack of cement. They cleared the vegetation around it, and all the activities held so far have taken place on its porches and in its gardens.
This Sunday, the Italian side organized the launch of a free children’s book for the kids in the community, and on the Cuban side, neighborhood artists took part: a clown, a young woman painting the children’s faces, and another making origami that the children themselves chose from a Japanese book. The children had a wonderful time and left very happy with their Italian gift: a didactic book that tells the story of a journey through Italy’s emblematic places.
I’m sharing some photos of the old house and the activity.
