The Postal Palace, modernity in the style of other times

Declared an Artistic Monument in 1987, this exceptional building celebrates its 111th anniversary.

 

In 1834, an English traveler named Charles Latrobe toured the streets of Mexico City and had the same impression that Bernal Díaz del Castillo had experienced three centuries before: he felt he was going through a dream.

That English traveler was the one who imposed to the capital the title that accompanies it since then – and that many attribute, mistakenly, to Alexander von Humboldt-: The City of Palaces, referring at that time to the stately palaces built with tezontle and quarry century ago

It was during the Porfiriato that the palatial genre became important and was implemented as a way of expressing the search for beauty, technological advances and the economic prosperity of the nation. At this time not only the constructive techniques of modern Europe were imported, but also the materials themselves, and even the design architects. It is therefore not surprising that an Italian named Adamo Boari, together with the wise man in calculations and foundations of the time, the engineer Gonzalo Garita, was in charge of designing the Fifth Post Office on the site where the Franciscans had built the Royal Hospital of Third Parties and in which the members of the order were treated.

The Post was conceived then, as a modern building-metal structure incorporating technical advances such as elevators, flammable materials, among others-but eclectic style. Francisco de la Maza would describe it as "a functional building … and lavish on the outside for which (Boari) had no more than to remember the Palace of the Doges, turning it upside down, adorned with Plateresque elements, while peeping also the Elizabethan Gothic ".

And it is that eclecticism, as Justin Fernandez would say, referring to Boari's second work in Mexico, a monument to Porfirio Diaz, was nothing more than "the fusion of the old and the new … and the oblivion of the intermediate".

No doubt criticized, this style is part of our architectural history, and is to celebrate that the Postal Palace commemorates its 111th anniversary in this city. When visiting its elegant spaces, and observing the materials and the detail with which its ornamentation was made, there is no doubt that this architecture makes us feel, as Bernal Díaz del Castillo would say, that we are going through a dream.