The core area of Old Havana continued to prosper commercially during the period of US occupation (1898-1902) even though residential areas were in decline.
The dueling forces of an expanding business district and disintegrating living conditions contributed to an expansion of the city toward the West where other central spaces developed.
New elite neighborhoods were developed in nearby Centro Habana and in Cerro, and this process led to further decline in the residential areas of Old Havana. Meanwhile, American authorities were concentrating on several projects which would also change the form of the city.
During the period of American occupation, the United States introduced at least five major public works projects:
- they completed a network of water mains throughout the city
- they expanded the networks of electric street lights, telephones, and natural gas
- comprehensive systems of sewage and garbage collection were established
- extended street paving facilitated the introduction of the automobile
- the electric streetcar replaced the horse-drawn tram running through the new neighborhood of Vedado and was gradually extended throughout the inner city and some suburbs.
Perhaps the most influential was project was the design of the Malecon, a (now famous) waterfront boulevard linking Old Havana with the neighborhood of Vedado.
The Malecon area was connected by bridge to the community of Miramar in Marianao across the Almendares River.
The highway also enabled the development of Havana’s waterfront, and many wealthy habaneros soon set up residence there. It also facilitated the construction of summer homes for Havana’s elites in sparsely settled areas which later became ‘bedroom communities’.
Most importantly, the highway project, by launching the suburbanization of the city to the west and south, contributed to increasing stratification in the city.
Vedado, once a community of elites, became more densely settled, with the Almendares River serving as an edge to the city, forcing urbanization southward.
Expanded transportation networks led to the relocation of small factories and working-class residences in the newly urbanized areas, and other public works projects encouraged further expansion at the city’s edge.
This pattern of growth meant that by the mid-1930s, the urban poor were increasingly encroaching on Havana’s formerly exclusive suburban neighborhoods where parceled lands created small lots for non-elites.
Cerro lost its ‘snob’ appeal as workers sought housing close to its arsenal, factories, and port, and Centro Habana became home to Spanish immigrants, a new urban proletariat, and lower-middle class workers.
Moreover, as the city sprawled outward, squatter settlements emerged in the neighborhoods of Las Yaguas, La Timba, Cueva del Humo, and La Tamora. Despite attempts to construct low-income public housing, the situation worsened throughout the 1940s and 1950s.
Well-to-do habaneros were forced to rely on the geographical boundary provided by the Almendares River and the imposing dominance of Camp Columbia to keep the proletariat at bay. Further, while the physical shape of the city was being consciously altered, the population of Havana was affected by other more subtle factors.
During the first 25 years of the 20th century, concurrent with the outward expansion of the city, two influences associated with the foreign-dominated sugar economy also impacted the urbanization process.
- The first involved the development of the sugar latifundio with its concomitant increase in internal migratory workers who moved back and forth between Cuba’s rural and urban environments in search of work, flooding urban areas during the months of sugar harvest inactivity.
- Second, a large number of unskilled workers began to migrate to Cuba, responding to inducements from landowners who were interested in minimizing the cost of labor.
These factors, in tandem, led to the development of a surplus labor market which produced a migratory movement to the cities.
The process was exacerbated by the following:
- the cyclical character of the demand for labor
- the displacement of small farmers from the land
- the substitution of immigrants for Cuban rural workers
- the introduction of improved, labor-saving technologies in the modern centrales (mills)
- the disappearance of diversified agriculture with a consequent reduction in employment opportunities.
Many of Havana’s incoming migrants, shaped by the above forces, flowed into Old Havana where housing stock was not sufficient to meet the growing pressure. In fact, in the wake of Havana’s outward expansion, housing in Old Havana had entered a cycle of decline.
Along with the construction of the Malecon, the renewed commercial prosperity of the colonial core initiated changes in land use in Old Havana.
As increased trade with the United States resulted in more extensive activity in the harbor, the residential sector of the neighborhood continued to deteriorate, the ground floors of many residences were converted into warehouses, and housing was replaced by service sector structures.
Soon, the old palaces were divided into flats and then carved into rooms to rent. Communal bathrooms were added, normally in the courtyards, allowing the structure to function as a ciudadela or “boarding house” which gradually became the predominant housing model.
About this time, also, more than 200 brothels emerged in Havana, mostly in close proximity to the port and business sector of the old city. Also, as we have seen, shantytowns appeared on the fringes, providing shelter for the indigent, thieves, assassins, army deserters, freed slaves, and beggars.
In contrast, while the pressure on Old Havana’s housing mounted, the 1920s saw a growth in the commercial prosperity of the community. This was led by the full consolidation of Cuba’s financial and banking sectors who were located in the area of Old Havana known as “Little Wall Street.” This locale became an important symbol of the North Americanization which characterized the beginning of the Republican Period.
Other commercial and administrative activities remained clustered around the old plazas, and the area took on increasing economic importance as the growth of the sugar trade spurred retail activity. The port, also, remained important, a fact that should not have been surprising for Cuba has only seven major deep-water ports.
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