The Dome of the Cuban National Capitol

ABSTRACT

The National Capitol of Cuba was built between 1926 and 1929, with very short completion terms for the technical-construction means of that time. The historic-technological article describes its dome’s bearing structure and it analyzes the constructive method used in the central part of this urban symbol. The analysis begins from a very rigorous study of the original plans, on-site visits made at the beginning of its rehabilitation, historic photographs belonging to the Ministry of Public Works and the revision of the published texts and photographs in The Capitol Book, of which there are only two physical copies in the premises of the Havana City Historian’s Office and in the Cuban Ministry of Culture.¹

¹ Five copies of the book are available in US University Libraries (Harvard Library, University of Florida, green Library of the Florida International University, University of Miami, University of Kansas, University of California, Riverside). The so-called Capitol Book (El Libro del Capitolio) was written by Emeterio S. Santovenia, in (1933). Its real title is: República de Cuba. Capitolio. Other recent publications about the Capitol of Havana include:

Aniceto Ramos, Rolando (1998). El Capitolio de La Habana. Ed. José Martí.

Vázquez García, Humberto. (2006) Historia, aventuras y leyendas del brillante del Capitolio. Ed. Boloña, La Habana Vieja, Cuba. Publicaciones de la Oficina del Historiador de la Ciudad. Colección Raíces (Reedición de 1949).

Pujols, Rolando; García Ortíz, Teresa. (1998). Guía de El Capitolio. Archivo Centro Capitolio de La Habana. Com-Relieve: Editorial Escudo de Oro.

Hartman, Joseph. (2019) Dictator’s Dreamscape: How Architecture and Vision Built Machado’s Cuba and Invented Modern Havana. University of Pittsburgh Press.

Mestre Martí, M.; Jiménez Vicario, P.M.; Ródenas López, M.A. (2019). La construcción del Capitolio de La Habana. Informes de la Construcción, 71(556): e319. https://doi.org/10.3989/ic.66826

The article makes known the technical and constructive outstanding points, used at that time for the implementation of the dome and it unmasks its internal structure, which is extremely complicated. The text is accompanied by several axonometries that facilitate its graphical understanding.

KEYWORDS:

• construction
• Cuban architecture
• dome
• structure
• the Havana Capitol

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ Five copies of the book are available in US University Libraries (Harvard Library, University of Florida, green Library of the Florida International University, University of Miami, University of Kansas, University of California, Riverside). The so-called Capitol Book (El Libro del Capitolio) was written by Emeterio S. Santovenia, in (1933). Its real title is: República de Cuba. Capitolio. Other recent publications about the Capitol of Havana include:

Aniceto Ramos, Rolando (1998). El Capitolio de La Habana. Ed. José Martí.

Vázquez García, Humberto. (2006) Historia, aventuras y leyendas del brillante del Capitolio. Ed. Boloña, La Habana Vieja, Cuba. Publicaciones de la Oficina del Historiador de la Ciudad. Colección Raíces (Reedición de 1949).

Pujols, Rolando; García Ortíz, Teresa. (1998). Guía de El Capitolio. Archivo Centro Capitolio de La Habana. Com-Relieve: Editorial Escudo de Oro.

Hartman, Joseph. (2019) Dictator’s Dreamscape: How Architecture and Vision Built Machado’s Cuba and Invented Modern Havana. University of Pittsburgh Press.

Mestre Martí, M.; Jiménez Vicario, P.M.; Ródenas López, M.A. (2019). La construcción del Capitolio de La Habana. Informes de la Construcción, 71(556): e319. https://doi.org/10.3989/ic.66826

² When the Capitol was built, five large rotating reflectors were placed in the lantern, whose lighting power is said to be 60 million spark plugs each, with a theoretical range of 50 miles (approximately 80 km). 1 spark plug: deprecated measurement whose equivalence is 1 watt = 1.1 spark plugs.:

³ See image of the Cuba’s Office of Public Works, Centellador on Top of El Capitolio, Havana, Cub, from Album fotográfico de los actos celebrados, photograph, 1929. Courtesy of the Wolfsonian, Miami Beach, Florida. In: Hartmann, Joseph R. (2019) Temple of the Benevolent Dictator Simulacra, Political Theatre, and Revolution. University of Pittsburgh Press. Page 36. https://upittpress.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/9780822945468exr.pdf Accessed, January 11, 2021.

⁴ “In the eight-floor building La Metropolitana which occupies an area of 1,800 m², only 1,032 tons were used in the steel structure and in the Palacio del Centro Asturiano designed to support four additional floors, about 2,100 tons. In the dome of the Capitol building the steel tonnage exceeds that amount and the concrete volume of its four main bases practically equals that of the one used in the foundation of the columns of the mentioned building.

Regarding the height of the top end — about 96 m — the height of Cuban Telephone Co. building, one of our tallest towers, is only two thirds that of the Capitol. The spire of the Church of the Sacred Heart is the closest in height, due to its location at a higher altitude, but it is actually 20% lower.” (Santovenia, E.S., 1933, 58)

⁵ Engineer Corydon Purdy, a pioneer in steel-frame construction, opened his first offices in Chicago. He associated in 1893 with Engineer Lightner Henderson, the Purdy & Henderson. The firm established their first branch in Manhattan. After the Spanish American War, Purdy & Henderson were one of the first U.S. firms in Cuba to offer their expertise. Their Havana projects included steel-framed edifices clad in concrete-block, cast-stone, natural stone, and reinforced concrete. (Cueto 2020)

Other examples in Cuba from Purdy & Henderson engineers are as follows: The Lonja del Comercio building (1909), The Plaza Hotel (1909), The Centro Gallego (1915), The Royal Bank of Canada Building (1919), The Centro Asturiano (1927), The Hotel Nacional (1930) and the Radio Centro CMQ Building (1947)

⁶ Some interesting facts: The structure has a total weight of approximately 2,000 tons; the thickness of the maximum steel section is 13.97 cm; the heaviest piece is 26 Tons; the weight per linear meter of the heaviest architrave is 1,756 kg; the weight per linear meter of the heaviest column 1,205 kg/ml.

⁷ “The Capitol (of Havana) was an exact replica of the U.S. Capitol, only smaller. The symbol of the Partido Popular Cubano was the Statue of the Liberty”. Pérez Jr., Louis A. (1999). On Becoming Cuban: identity, Nationality and Culture. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press Books. ISBN: 978-0-80,782-487–0. Pág. 375.

⁸ The Capitol of Puerto Rico building is in the Italian Renaissance style, although many of its ornamentation details are in a pure classical Roman style. Construction of the dome was completed in 1961.

⁹ The diamond belonged to the last czar of Russia, Nicholas II, and it arrived in Havana in the hands of a Turkish jeweler who acquired it in Paris.

¹⁰ See: Mestre Martí et al. (2018) pp. 40-51.

¹¹ American Institute of Steel Construction (AISC) Standard specification for structural steel for building (1923). https://dokumen.tips/documents/aisc-1923-standard-specification-for-structural-steel-for-buildings.html. Accessed: January 13, 2021

¹² Fortunately, during the restoration work, the same quarry and same Italian and Cuban manufacturers of the original construction were accessible.

¹³ Unfortunately, we have not been able to have access to the archives of the company Purdy & Henderson, in New York, where the plans of the structure of the dome of the National Capitol of Cuba are kept, which is pending for future investigations. Access to this information will make it possible to know the considered loads for the dome internal structure calculation, as well as the quality of the explicit materials used in 1929, as it has been possible in other similar recent researches, such as those by Jorquera et al. (2017), Azil et al. (2020), Boostani et al. (2018)

¹⁴ These pieces were manufactured by means of molds in the workshops in Havana and they were collected on site. Mold architecture experienced a boom in Cuba from the early twentieth century to the 1930s. Cuba was the first country to produce cement in Latin America (the first Portland factory in Havana was opened in 1895). Workshops such as “El Arte Moderno” (Modern Art), founded in 1911, gave birth to the Cement and Gypsum Casting Workshop Duque & Co., later called Compañía Cubana de Piedra Artificial S.A.(Cuban Artificial Stone Company), where all the decorative elements of the Bacardi building, finished in 1930, were made. The American company Purdy & Henderson also took part in this project. In many of these prefabricated elements workshops, a variety of artificial stone elements were built, such as column drums, bases, cornices, plaster pieces and decorative elements. This facilitated the construction of works at high speed.

The use of artificial stone increased the decoration without depending on the chisel. The “mold architecture” imposed a new concept of decoration coming from the industrial world. The “mold” was the typical element of industrialization applied to the architecture of the infinite, repeatable and combinable series; architecture to be consumed and assimilated by the bourgeois society in the early 1930s in Cuba. (Chateloin Santiesteban 2007)