Looking west down the Avenue of Palms, visitors saw the vista closed by Cuba's pavilion: a rose-tinted Spanish colonial mansion about 140 feet square. The architect, Francisco Centurión of the University of Havana, combined features of two suburban Havana houses. The tower at the northerly end, with little Spanish balconies at the fourth floor, was modeled on the belfry of Havana's Church of San Francisco. At the foot of the stairs stood two war relics, a Zalinsky dynamite gun and a cannon scarred by Mauser bullets.
Inside, a grand stair curved up past statues of Gómez and Martí. Offices and living rooms on two floors surrounded an open patio with a fountain, palms and ferns, overlooked by an arcade and four balconies. On Sunday afternoons the public danced around the fountain. The pavilion gave away cigars worth ten or twelve thousand dollars during the season.
At a glance
- About 140 feet square; cost about $60,000 to build and furnish, plus about $1,000 for the gardens.
- Cuba's Congress appropriated $250,000, later adding $50,000.
- Dedicated April 10, 1915; site dedicated September 25, 1913.
Afterward
Not recorded; presumably auctioned and wrecked.
Sources
- Frank Morton Todd, The Story of the Exposition, vol. III (1921), ch. XXXV, p. 203
- Frank Morton Todd, The Story of the Exposition, vol. III (1921), ch. XXXVI, p. 210
- Frank Morton Todd, The Story of the Exposition, vol. III (1921), ch. XLVII, pp. 256-258
- Official Guide of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition (1915), p. 46