Building with Collapsed Walls
Description
A two-story brick building with a wooden roof located in an urban area. It is missing a portion of one side wall and a portion of the front wall on the second floor, as well as a section of one side wall on the first floor. There is a projecting iron balcony. Debris from the collapse, including parts of another iron balcony, can be seen on the ground. These are damages caused by an earthquake.| Origin Name |
CARDC573
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| Relation |
Fundación Luis Muñoz Marín > Sección X, Serie 3, Colección Ángel Ramón del Corral
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| Geographical Coverage |
Mayagüez
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| Date |
1918
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| Descriptive Notes |
Title assigned by the cataloging team. Geographic location taken from the inscription on the image. Date corrected by the cataloger. Inscription: "Mayagüez - 1917" "CARDC 573."
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| Descripción decolonial |
Titled “Mayagüez 1917,” is a collapsed façade of a city building evokes multiple potential readings of natural and cultural disasters. In 1918, the city of Mayagüez suffered the San Fermín earthquake, also known as the Puerto Rico earthquake. The 7.1 magnitude earthquake triggered a tsunami, resulting in massive losses in life and property, with severe destruction of buildings, including churches, buildings, and lighthouses, primarily on the west coast of the island. If correctly labeled, the photo may show us a process of destruction and loss that had already begun before the earthquake, as the United States´ government sought to regulate housing, destroy old properties, and rebuild Puerto Rico’s architectural landscape following housing tendencies from the United States. Alternatively, it could be misdated. If so, here we see the aftermath of a natural disaster that would soon become an utterly cultural one in the wake of the United States´ colonial rule. The San Fermín earthquake triggered a new policy of housing and architecture, in which buildings were to be built in reinforced concrete. The result, over time, was a loss of local and Indigenous knowledge, particularly in traditional building methods of wood and carpentry.
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| Historical Background | |
| Architectural Subject |
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| Decolonial Subject | |
| Rights |
English Rights. (hyperlink)
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| Editor |
Fundación Luis Muñoz Marín
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| Resource Format |
JPEG
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| Resource Type |
Image
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