America Building Complex: One more absence in the city landscape
The complex of buildings America, projected since the mid-fifties by the architect José Villagrán García, was at the time one of the most important works that were realized in the historical center of the City of Mexico. In it lived different architectural languages, confirming that modernity could dialogue with colonial preexistences. Here we share a little of this story.
The Church of Corpus Christi, built in the eighteenth century, still stands. The one that does not continue as part of the urban landscape of the City of Mexico is the complex of buildings America, a most important work of the sixties and projected since the mid-fifties by the renowned architect José Villagrán García. This complex located in the center of the city, consisted of three main parts: a building dedicated to offices; The other to car parking; And the third, to hotel.
The project had as main space and Axis of the others, a central square, which was formed by a vestibule of access to the whole, and through it was made the circulation of the low plants of the buildings, between two arteries of first importance , Juarez Avenue and Independencia Avenue. The parking building consisted of six floors and a basement with a quota for 405 cars. As for those moments the car industry was expanding successfully, in addition to the spaces for vehicles, in the basement was a service of washing and oiling and on the sixth floor were installed the offices of the company owning the latter
Around the church of Corpus Christi, which at that time worked as a museum — and at some point it was thought to demolish but which fortunately was not concretized — a small pavilion was built with shops on the ground floor, and a double-height commercial floor. All the lower floors of the whole were commercial and the office spaces, whose access was by the square, had destined, in addition to the ground floor, a double height floor for shops and eleven floors for offices. And it was because in this complex was lodged the General Insurance Company America, so this financial and commercial center was known as the name of America Real Estate Center or building complex America.
In all the structures of this group, we used the reinforced concrete and the first quality materials and the latest technology at that time, such as the stone Pavement, the stone also on the facade but combined with plastic, horizontal modulated elements and Vertical aluminium in the office spaces, stone and glass blinds and aluminium blinds for the West facades.
The architect Alberto T. Arai, left his opinion on this whole describing as follows: "Masses, solids and clears are combined in angles formed by large faces found. Seen the building according to the horizontal strata that form it, overlapping in ascending order, it is discovered the discreet melody of the facades. The solid subject of this one gravitates on the lower floors, but the rest is slipped after without variations towards the top[…] "
A separate mention deserves the building for accommodation space, in which the renowned Alameda Hotel was to be installed, which was built when the office buildings and the parking lot had been completed. Plans to begin the construction of the Alameda began in 1958 — two years after the parking lot and offices were lifted — but the efforts for its financing took longer than expected, so it could be built between 1961 and 1962.
We only have a few details about how the hotel was inside, with its pool on the 17th floor completely covered and overlooking the Latin American tower, its elegant interiors, its banquet hall or the Roman Lounge, "impeccably adorned with Flower beds and artistically illuminated ice figures "when an event was held. We have more testimonies of its outward appearance that gave the feeling of modernity thanks to its huge windows and that located Mexico as a cosmopolitan city installed in the future, because the building contrasted clearly with the small church of Corpus Christi, which suddenly found itself shrouded in the new construction.
The Alameda Hotel remained in office until 1985 when the earthquake of September 19 caused irreparable damage and, like other constructions in Mexico City, was quite affected by the movement. In this way, the complex of buildings America had to be demolished to rehabilitate the place and to convert it since the year 2005 in what we know as Plaza Juárez. The small church of Corpus Christi, however, is still standing and witnessing the transformation of the city for more than three centuries.
by Paulina Martínez