Benito Juarez School and the cement boom in the 1920s
The history of cement, a material so common today, teaches us lessons from our own constructive tradition, so its use in the Benito Juárez School is also an illustrator. Not only did it represent an achievement of the Revolution in education, but it was also the first major building to start the government's push for the cement industry during the 1920s. Let us learn from this history with the firmness and conviction that our ancestors had, that nothing is forever except cement.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, no cement was manufactured in Mexico. However, by 1954, 1,765, 000 tonnes were manufactured, or a 50-kilogram sack every second. By 1900 there were only a few factories that used it as raw material, usually in the making of mosaics, but outside of it, cement only served to cover leaks in the table roofs and make minor repairs in houses and industries, which caused that demand for this material was very low. According to the specialists, progress in cement making began with the foundation of the first three factories assembled with rotary kilns.
The first was Cementos Hidalgo, established in Hidalgo, Nuevo León, managed by John F. Brittingham, founded in 1905 but started operations in 1906. The second major company was the Portland Cement Manufacturing Company s.a., founded around 1903 as the Jasso Cement Factory by Henry and George Gibbons. Merged around 1905 with the Pimentel Society, it gave rise to the Mexican Company of Cement Portland s.a., which was later managed by the National Bank of Mexico. When he became independent from the bank, he gave way to the Portland Cement Manufacturing Company. However, the company could never recover from the decline in its production during the Revolution and again became the property of Banamex, its main creditor who controlled it from 1918 to 1930.
The third company was Cemento Tolteca, located in a town of San Marcos, in hidalgo state. It was established in 1911 by a group of American industrialists led by William J. Burk. This was the only company that continued to operate during the Revolution, but its activities decreased because by 1915 its production was only four thousand tons. However, after the whirlwind of the Revolution, by the 1920s, in addition to having better technologies, production of this material began to increase due in large part to government investment in public buildings.
Apparently, cement suited well to the modernizing discourse that was touted at the time, which coincided with the rebuilding of the country as the political purpose of the victors. The lifting of new buildings would be a way to activate the industry in addition to responding to the social demands of the time of which education, housing and health would be the most important. Thus, gradually, a series of works began in the early twenties, in which cement would be the main material and to which it would be exalted and advertised as the panacea to the constructive problems of the moment.
A clear example of this situation is illustrated by the Benito Juárez School designed by the architect Carlos Obregón Santacilia in Mexico City. Although the architect still fails to break with traditional forms and designs a neocolonial building, the novelty was based on the use of cement in practically its entire structure. In this way, not only was the building exalted as an achievement of the Revolution in education, but it was also the first major building that initiated the government's push to the cement industry during the 1920s.
This educational building was built between 1923 and 1925, on the land that the government had ceded to the Ministry of Public Education, and within which the National Stadium would also be built, located in what were considered "the suburbs of the Rome colony." The comments of the time revolved around the use of the material as the best for school construction as "concrete […]provides all the necessary safety and hygiene elements for establishments of its kind because, well-built, it is at Quake, cyclone and fire test, and is so conroomable for the architect, it allows the design of large doors and windows to supply the spacious study rooms, light and ventilation in abundance."
In this way, it was noted that all the structural parts of this educational center were concrete: walls, ceilings, vaults, floors, intermediate floors, stairs. This provided security for students, made the facilities comfortable and healthy and made it a place conducive to the development of children, which spent a third of their life in school. In addition, the walls, made of concrete blocks, maintained a pleasant temperature in all seasons of the year. The building, equipped with a central courtyard with two teaching areas, linked by the body of the library, contributed to Mexico City a total of 1300 places in 52 classrooms and the total of the work cost about one million pesos.
In the speech, it was said that the Benito Juárez school highlighted the laudable effort that the government emanated from the Mexican Revolution made for education. In reality, they would soon realize that a school was not enough to meet the demand for educational spaces in Mexico City. The building proved costly and somewhat aachronic, but it became a good example of how concrete could be employed in a building that had to cover special characteristics, so the adaptability of the material was evident and invited builders to use it in their works.
With the phrase "cement is forever" continued the campaign for the use of cement that apparently paid off, because as we noted at the beginning of the article, the amount of concrete produced by the middle of the twentieth century increased considerably. Today, we cannot imagine any construction without the use of this precious material that has come to be known even by the name "grey gold".
by Paulina Martínez Figueroa