From building houses out of cardboard boxes in his parents’ electrical store when he was a child, to designing candy stores at the university, Franklin Contreras was always destined to be an architect.

The talented Guatemalan now owns his own firm, which employs over 200 people, and their designs stand out as pieces of art, especially along the streets of La Antigua Guatemala.

Having grown up in the historic city, the architect long ago fell in love with its distinctive Spanish Colonial style.

“It still surprises me every time I go inside a house here; each door hides something new,” says Contreras. “It’s a privilege to work in such a beautiful place: There’s no stress and no problem with traffic slowing down construction.”

Within his work, the Guatemalan architect draws upon Moorish motifs, such as Moroccan brickwork, domed cupolas and water features, to soften the Spanish Colonial style.

After graduating from Francisco Marroquín University, Guatemala City, in the late 1980s, Contreras’ first project was to build a furniture workshop on a plot of land his father had bought him in Antigua. However, it soon became apparent that the young architect had bigger plans: He constructed an elegant two-story building with a central patio and interior gardens, where his company still resides, and from there his career took off.

First he built for foreigners and then for locals, with many clients moving into their homes before they were even completed. Each of his designs is unique and intended to surpass the customers’ expectations. “I like the challenging clients; when people agree with me too often, it’s boring. I like it when people have their own ideas, and I have to find ways to fulfil them,” says Contreras.

Contreras acknowledges his style has changed since he first became an architect over 20 years ago. “I think that over time you’re exposed to different sources of inspiration. I like to travel and that has definitely changed my way of designing spaces and architectural details.”

The designer remains unaware of what makes his style of architecture unique to him. “I don’t know whether it’s the curved ceilings, the materials we work with, or the use of axis that remains a constant, but people often tell me they recognize my designs—I hope that’s a good thing!” he laughs.

Even his modern designs retain their traditional roots and the architect is able to perfect the balance between preserving the traditional and evolving with the fashions.

“Before, kitchens were closed areas for the cook, but now cooking’s become a family activity so I like to design open kitchens and eating areas, which become the heart of the house.”

Contreras believes in maximizing one’s surroundings—he uses roofs as places to entertain friends while enjoying the mountains and volcanoes of Antigua, and internationally, glass walls to provide a contemporary feel while showing off beautiful views in Mexico City.

However, working in a World Heritage site such as Antigua, does come with a few difficulties, and failure to abide by the rules can have costly consequences. CONSEJO, an institution established in 1969 to preserve the city’s heritage, imposes strict limitations on construction within the historic center. For example, there are height limitations, second floors are forbidden and restoration projects are closely monitored.

“It’s complicated working in the center, but if we didn’t have these rules we would have lost the city years ago,” states Contreras. He admits he used to prefer the freedom of working outside the historic center, but now enjoys the challenge of restoring buildings inside it.

In the past, he has designed houses and hotels, many of them in Antigua, but he now wants to do something to benefit the whole community. “We have a special treasure in our country as people still know how to work with their hands,” states Contreras. He hopes that an upcoming project will help artisans to promote their crafts and goods around Antigua.

For most people, home is where the heart is, but for Gerri and George Chester, home is where Guatemala is—whether they’re in Florida or in La Antigua Guatemala.

Tired of moving around every few years for work, the retired Foreign Service officers decided to set up house in Florida just over 10 years ago and build their dream home where they could keep their boat and sail to the Bahamas and the Caribbean. However, having worked for the U.S. Embassy in Guatemala City, the Chesters weren’t quite ready to say goodbye to the country they had called home for the previous six years.

“We fell in love with it here,” admits Gerri. “It was our last overseas assignment, our kids grew up here and we just loved the Spanish colonial-style houses.”

Frustrated with what they could find in the U.S., the former diplomats started searching for inspiration for their dream house around the streets of Antigua.

“We went through all these magazines looking for ideas but couldn’t find anything,” says George. “Then we went over to a friend’s house that was designed by (Guatemalan architect/builder) Franklin; we saw it and immediately wanted one.”

Not wishing to waste any time the Chesters flew Franklin Contreras to Florida to walk their lot and see what he could come up with. A couple of days later, he sketched something on the back of an envelope and so the project began.

“Franklin’s unbelievable,” insists George. “He provided the spark; starting with a blank piece of paper he designed everything. We could have got furniture in the U.S., but we only wanted Franklin—the man’s a magician.”

Once draftsmen had translated the initial design to meet Florida’s codes, building started on the custom-designed four-bedroom home and just over a year later, in Christmas 2001, it was completed.

“We prepared most of the construction details here and sent them over to the States,” says Franklin.
“We shipped the two corridors (porches) with all their pieces, the wrought iron balconies and railings, the stone work for the fireplaces, old doors—even the roof tiles were quantified and sent to provide the right exterior look to the house. That was the uniqueness of the project: Gerri and George wanted the real stuff!”
With a sunken fountain, wrought iron framing the inset concrete window sills and gargoyles rather than guttering, this Spanish colonial-style house is “pure Antigua”—seemingly plucked from the city’s cobbled streets and placed in Yulee, a town near the coast of northeast Florida.
The house is not only Guatemalan from the outside, it is also filled with Guatemalan features on the inside, too.

After building the pieces, the talented architect took them apart, numbered them and sent them to Florida in a 40-foot container.

The giant box also delivered custom-made beds, a Guatemalan art nouveau chair and five pairs of antique wooden doors, bought at the Chichicastenango market.
“I think the real challenge was for the builder in the U.S. to use my design and adapt it to comply with all the regulations, codes and building processes so that it was livable and coherent with the Florida environment,” recalls Franklin.

“I know how difficult it is even to change an outlet in the U.S. if you don’t have the right certified electrician with a license, insurance and so forth. We did our best to send instructions on how to put together all the pieces of the terraza española and other details, but this was a totally different language for the contractor.”

With its soaring cathedral ceiling, 26-foot high wood-burning fireplace and outdoor swimming pool, the Chesters’ dream home is a beautiful rendition of a 1700s luxury Guatemalan home.

“Everybody told us we were crazy not to screen in the pool, but that wouldn’t be in keeping with the unique colonial style of our home,” exclaims George.

With careers that have taken the couple all over the globe, it’s not just Guatemalan artifacts that decorate the Chester household. Living and working in locations from Germany to South Africa means they have accumulated an impressive collection of eclectic items along the way, including Belgian stained-glass windows and a nine-foot long, 19th century French farm table. Their diverse array of global purchases, which typifies their past, is so important to them that they even had certain rooms of the house designed to fit the furniture, not the other way around.

The unique abode, which is located on deep water property in a secluded part of Nassau County, is surrounded by oak trees — four miles from the nearest grocery store. The Chesters are such fans of Franklin Contreras’ work that he has since designed a second home for the couple in Antigua.

Although the initial idea for a Spanish colonial residence in Florida presented them with a few challenges, this museum-quality house bottles the essence of Guatemala. It is a tribute to the strength of architecture in the country and a testament to the unique way that chapín life captures people’s hearts.

“At the end of the day it was teamwork, and I have to admit that George and Gerri did a wonderful job of providing Florida with a flavor of Antigua,” says Franklin.

In Michener’s Poland (1983), a professor who clung to life in a concentration camp pleaded, “Rebuild! Rebuild!” as “the most important thing to do when this nightmare ends…an act of faith, an act of commitment to the future…a testimony to the greatness we once knew.” Proud Poles passionately rebuilt the historic buildings of their capital, the 700-year old city that had been mercilessly reduced to rubble in World War II bombings, literally picking up the pieces and putting them back together again like a puzzle. It took them 12 years. Big bronze letters set in the sidewalk record that in 1980 UNESCO added Warsaw, Poland to its list of World Heritage Sites.

One year earlier, in 1979, UNESCO added La Antigua Guatemala to the World Heritage Sites list, recorded on a large, colorful tile set in the outside wall of City Hall. This old capital of the Kingdom of Guatemala met destruction not by the hand of man but by earthquake in 1773. Rather than rebuild, the royal order was “Move! Move!” Some eager, some dragging their feet, the population relocated to the New Guatemala, now Guatemala City. It took some so long to get with the program that an order in 1777 required that the town be completely abandoned, destroyed and leveled to the ground.

Fortunately that never happened, although private homes as well as public buildings were stripped to reuse materials in construction of the new capital. Squatters moved into the leftover shells and recreated a peaceful life, a déjà vu of the beginnings of the town.

In 1541 Spanish nobles, driven from their homes in what is now Ciudad Vieja by a torrential mudslide, moved within months to re-establish themselves and their new capital just three miles away in what is now La Antigua. Their emergently built houses undoubtedly had simple thatched roofs. It took months and years to clear the necessary permissions from Spain for almost anything, including materials and conscripted Indian labor for the houses they would construct. Besides, even though they were nobles, many were not wealthy people. It was primarily an agricultural center, but in 230 years the capital developed in size and significance.

Stability brought prosperity, and houses became mansions, with sophisticated Roman and Moorish styles the colonists knew from Spain. Wooden doors and window shutters were paneled and carved. Tiles decorated windowsills and fountains. Perpetual repair and rebuilding resulted from repeated earthquakes, dictating single stories and thicker walls.

In contrast to the 12 years it took the Poles to rebuild Warsaw, rebuilding in La Antigua after the move in the late 1770s did not begin to happen for over a century, and a half century later more destruction happened than restoration, all in the course of modernization. By that time properties had changed hands, had been subdivided and redefined by commerce that came to the town with the coffee industry. Remains of few homes could be salvaged intact.

Articles in the April, May and June (‘06) issues of the Revue provided rare glimpses inside three restored colonial mansions. Several common threads emerge. An outer wall that protected inner privacy, stone doorframes and window bases, ridged, hexagonal and octagonal medallion windows, wooden window grills, arches, fountains—all of these left their prints on La Antigua.

Homes of the colonial era commonly had a single, large, stone-framed entrance from the street to the zaguán. It was high enough for nobles on horseback and often wide enough for carriages. Some houses had a second door for business, but in most a smaller door was cut into the larger one for servants or others on foot. An entry arch led to a central patio, surrounded by a raised corridor off of which were the drawing room along the street side, dining room opposite and bedrooms along the connecting corridor. Kitchen and servants’ quarters were further back, off a service patio, with stables and carriage space also at the back or side of the house. This basic architectural footprint can be recognized in some current commercial establishments which were homes in the colonial era.

An example is the Hotel Posada Don Rodrigo, the large home of an apparently successful businessman in the 17th century, located on 5a avenida norte in the section of town that belonged to merchants. Other neighborhoods belonged to carpenters, others to ironworkers, others to potters, etc. In the 1960s the house was “…rather barren and obviously abused by those who have inhabited it during its long life,” wrote Verle Annis in The Architecture of Antigua Guatemala 1543-1773. “This is one of the few patios which is not filled with ferns, flowers, vines, trees, colorful birds and the sound of running water…A few flowers and shrubs…would completely change the atmosphere.” In 1968 the house was purchased and restored. A visitor today can see the transformation as well as the typical architectural footprint. The large, kitchen cúpula may be seen from the back patio, where the old washing pila remains.

Sturdily constructed two-part colonial kitchens, with corner ovens and low arches, were the greatest survivors. Kitchen chimneys and cúpulas have defied earthquakes for over four hundred years. The origin of this distinction of the La Antigua skyline is unclear but thought to have developed in the town itself.

House #6 on 4a avenida sur had two stories: business on the first floor, residence on the second, with kitchens on both. It was used as a hotel for years and then a presidential guesthouse.

House #12 on 4a calle oriente, now Doña Luisa Xicotencatl Bakery and Cafeteria, had similar construction. The place is named after the Mexican Indian princess whose father presented her along with a dowry of gold to conquistador Don Pedro de Alvarado, who became governor of the province. Don Pedro died shortly before the new town was established, but a prestigious property was granted to Doña Luisa and her daughter, Doña Leonor. The property known as Palacio de Doña Leonor, #8 on 4a calle oriente, extended all the way to 3a calle, where a hotel is today.

Doña Leonor became a prominent community figure. Two of her sons were mayors of the town, and the family acquired other nearby properties. Although nothing remains of the colonial construction, an elegant hotel has opened on the site of Doña Leonor’s residence. “I’ve made a promise to the spirit of that great woman,” says the current owner with a satisfied smile.

A fine home built in 1549, on the west side of the central plaza opposite the cathe-dral, became the residence of counts until 1775. The story goes that one of them, furious upon catching his wife with the butler, had the butler buried alive. This may have been confirmed when repairs after the 1976 earthquake uncovered a skeleton standing upright within the pantry walls! A remaining portion of the house is now occupied by Casa del Conde bookstore, shops and Café Condesa and Express, with the wide, stone entrance. The pila is at the rear of the café.

Because of Guatemala inheritance laws, ownership increases with the generations and sales become complicated, one reason why some remnants of colonial homes remain abandoned. Peeking through the window of one of these, where shoulder high weeds caress an arch, one wonders: Who lived here? More than beautiful stone mansions, these were homes of real people with real lives, joys, sorrows.

Jorge Luján Muñoz writes in Casa Guatemalteca (1999): “One of the most illustrative ways to understand a society is the study…of its domestic architecture…In residential architecture is seen clearly the constant overlap of past and future.”

Fortunately a few citizens, concerned about destruction by commercialization, united to have La Antigua Guatemala named a National Monument in 1944. Another wave of community action resulted in its being declared a Monumental City of the Americas in 1965, and in 1969 the Congress formed the National Council for the Protection of La Antigua Guatemala, forerunners of the UNESCO designation. Only by the perseverance of such efforts will the heritage of fine colonial homes be preserved.

The writer thanks CIRMA (Center for Mesoamerican Research) for competent reference assistance. Its location at 5a calle oriente #5 since 1979 has a documented history as a colonial residence of the 17th century.

photos by Jack Houston

Poet Robert Burns was voted Greatest Scot of All Time in 2009. Burns was born in 1759 in a thatch-roof cottage built by his father and lived there for seven years, a hard life of farming and poverty. He went on to live a fast life of carousing and died at age 37. But that’s another story. The cottage is now a quaint museum; there’s even a replica in Atlanta, Georgia.

Two hundred-plus years before Burns was born, thatch-roof shelters went up all over in Santiago de los Caballeros, now La Antigua Guatemala. They are long since gone; but even if preserved, they would hardly be considered quaint. Similarities end with the thatch roofs and the hard life.

In 1541 survivors of the historic flood that destroyed Almolonga on the skirts of Volcano Agua, the previous site of the seat of the Spanish government in Guatemala, struggled and scrambled to rebuild their lives a few months later. They hurriedly put up provisional poles and cornstalks and sticks of any kind, all shelters with thatch roofs. The people were not well and able-bodied either. They had been traumatized and wounded; they had lost family and foundations. There was no international aid to helicopter in supplies and help. Certainly the fine architecture that graces the ruins seen today in La Antigua was not on the to-do list.

The establishment of the new Santiago was one more headache for Spanish King Carlos V too. At the very least, the timing was bad. There were political pressures of the Protestant Reformation, Turks threatening trade at the Mediterranean coast, trouble in Vienna and Hungary; and Conquistador Pedro de Alvarado had just died in Mexico. “The process of conquest culminated in the 1540s with the definitive establishment of the city of Santiago in the Valley of Panchoy.” (Historia General de Guatemala, Vol II)

The first order of business was to provide a place for mass for the workers doing the urbanization, such as it was in that time. The site chosen for the Ermita de Santa Lucía (a chapel for the image) was at the southwestern corner of the new Santiago, at the road to Almolonga and off the official grid pattern layout so as be out of the way of the work in progress. Within months a church to serve as the temporary cathedral replaced the chapel, and in 1543 church authorities officially moved to the new city.

Interestingly, though, the Church of Santa Lucía was not the first to be built in the new area. Coincidentally, not long before the disaster, a chapel for an image of Santa Ana had been provided for a village to the southeast. According to J. Joaquín Pardo in Guía de Antigua Guatemala, a small church was built in 1541, “…being this the first there was in the Valley of Panchoy.” The Church of Santa Ana has continued to this day, with various careful reconstructions that have retained typical colonial architecture.

“Formal construction developed slowly due to few trained, experienced Spanish workers,” wrote Sidney Markman in Colonial Architecture of Antigua Guatemala. Even monks took up construction work to get the job done, “but also at times as a show of self-imposed humility.” Markman questioned the contribution of the indigenous population to the building process. Since all shelters—housing, churches, even monasteries—were originally of thatch, locals were put to work, but at the time they were not skilled in any construction trade and their numbers were few. Further complicating things were the New Laws issued from Spain in 1542 that freed slaves and relieved workers from abuse and injustices.

Indigenous populations developed outside the new town at its corners: Candelaria built in 1548 for farmers and artisans at the northeast, Manchén on the hill in 1565 for ironworkers and carpenters at the northwest, and Nuestra Señora de los Remedios in 1574 for rope and mat makers at the southeast. About that time the king instructed religious orders to spend more time and money on buildings “worthy of the newly introduced religion so that the Indians might be attracted to it and leave behind their heathen idol-worshiping.” Change began, with brick and stone becoming common in the 17th century. Tile and wood roofs replaced thatch; now as parish churches, residences for priests and large plazas to serve as marketplaces were added.

Santiago de los Caballeros experienced a building boom big time. According to Domingo Juarros in Compendio de la Historia del Reino de Guatemala 1500-1800, by the end of the 17th century there were 38 churches, including 16 monasteries and convents. The northwest area grew so rapidly that the little Church of Manchén was replaced in 1580 by the larger Church of San Sebastián, down from the hill to where it would be less isolated and more convenient, at the north end of 7a avenida.

Architecture flourished not only in religious structures but civic buildings and private homes as well. Styles moved from Renaissance to ultra Baroque, façades full of pillars, columns, arches, layers, niches, swirls and sculpture. These are seen in the ruins of La Antigua today. Of the first parish churches;

Spiral, elaborately decorated columns and niches make the Church of Candelaria, at the north end of 1a avenida, one of the finest examples of Baroque in the New World;

The Renaissance façade of the Church of Nuestra Señora de los Remedios, just over the little bridge as Calle de los Pasos divides toward the Ermita of El Calvario, contains the sculpture of Mary as a child;

Plaster filigree, flower designs and octagonal windows cling to the neglected Church of Manchén, little noticed today on the hillside to the right, across the busy intersection at the north end of 6a avenida, where the road curves left to San Felipe;

The church seen today on the site of the old Church of Santa Lucía, on the Alameda Santa Lucía at 7a calle, built in the late 20th century, “is supposed to be similar to the original,” according to Verle Annis in The Architecture of Antigua Guatemala, 1543-1773. It seems the services of the Church of Santa Lucía had been moved to the Church of San Sebastián;

Denuded of plaster, the Church of San Sebastian reveals brick structure. Franciscan recorder Ximénez wrote that the church had more than 8,000 parishioners by the end of the 18th century. That was more than the cathedral, which served the Spanish population, whose properties were within the town plan. Having not suffered significant earthquake damage in 1773, the church continued until 1874 when the roof collapsed, a century after the town moved to what is now Guatemala City.

Figures are hard to confirm, but most sources agree that the population that moved from Almolonga in 1541, counting local workers, was about 5,000. It grew to about 30,000, beyond the original grid, and was running out of space as well as funds to support the religious institutions. Authorities became stingy with permissions to build. Fortunately, perhaps, religious fervor waned at about the same time.

It had been 230 years and a long way from the thatch roof, improvised shelters. As nature dictates, all things run their courses, and the quakes of 1773 put an end to it all. Or, perhaps a new beginning.

photos by Jack Houston

text and photos by Kathie Friedley

The houses of La Antigua Guatemala

My partner and I are architectural tourists. We are captivated by old houses and love to view them through a lens of culture and history. We came here to learn how history and domestic life merged to create the houses of this old Spanish colonial city. Why do they look the way they do, and how have they changed over time?
We began with the 16th-century Spanish colonial capital of Central America, Santiago de los Caballeros de Guatemala, now known as La Antigua Guatemala.

The Houses in History

Natural disaster played a big role in shaping the houses of Santiago. From its founding in 1532, the city was rattled and buildings were tumbled repeatedly by earthquakes. Time after time the resilient citizens repaired and rebuilt the houses with ever-stronger materials and techniques.

The year 1773 was disastrous for Santiago. Three severe earthquakes hit the city, which by that time had more than 60,000 inhabitants. The Spanish citizens were ordered by the Captains General to move to a new capital, Guatemala City (La Nueva Guatemala de la Asunción). Only the poorest families and the large indigenous Mayan population remained, moving into fragments of houses left standing.

Had the earthquakes never happened, La Antigua would be at a vastly different city today, modernized and teeming with people and big-city problems. As it was, it sat forgotten, its old houses undisturbed, for the next 100 years.

In the mid-19th century, coffee was planted in the surrounding hills, and, as the coffee trade grew, people began returning to the old city. The new Antigüeños moved into the old houses and began to fix them up in keeping with colonial styles. But as the 20th century progressed, houses were being divided amongst family members. Having survived 300 years of natural disaster, the old houses were no match for the new onslaught. Clearly they needed help.

National Recognition

In 1944 the Guatemalan government declared the city a national monument. But it wasn’t until 1969 that laws were enacted to support preservation measures and the Consejo Nacional para la Protección de La Antigua Guatemala was established to protect and preserve the city and its buildings.

Preservation issues reached critical mass in 1976 after a severe earthquake damaged 20 percent of the city. In 1978 Antigua was deemed a UNESCO World Culture Heritage Site, and by the late 1990s, flocks of camera-toting tourists were bringing a new economy and with it, new preservation challenges.

In 1999, the group Salvemos Antigua was founded to strengthen efforts to preserve the city’s character.

To the delight of visitors today, the houses of Antigua offer a photo-op of the first order. As one gazes up cobbled streets, it’s not hard to visualize life in colonial times. Cascades ones for foot traffic and tiny doors at eye level served as peepholes. Bronze knockers and iron hinges, latches and other hardware adorned the doors.

Tall, grilled windows with stone bases called repisas de piedra are characteristic of Antigua. For privacy, the earliest houses had windows with shutters, while today one sees grilles of wrought iron. Most authentic are the rejas de madera which are grilles of turned wood spindles.

The patio fountain is a vestige of colonial times that adorns most old and new houses. In the 16th century, water flowed from the hills to the city’s edge and through brick and clay pipes into fountains and búcaros, often elaborately decorated, and into a utilitarian double or triple sink called a pila.

The domed octagonal cupolas called chimeneas that rise from city rooftops were built to draw smoke and heat from kitchen fires. Brilliant against the clear blue skies, these white cupolas are another classic image of the city.

Changing Times

Few early houses exist in their original forms. Over the centuries, large houses were divided into smaller ones and old windows turned into new doorways. New houses were built within large patios and on plots of land formerly farmed.

With every earthquake, the city lost some of its old houses permanently, and those destroyed became scrap yards of materials for the ones remaining. After the 1773 evacuation, doors, hardware, tiles, furniture and even columns were carried over the mountains to the new capital. Through the years, parts of houses were shuffled and styles mixed, making them difficult to date.

The houses were continually altered to reflect new fashions and trends. In the late 1600s, Baroque curves and ornamentation began to appear. Carvers turned stone and wood into fanciful figures and elaborate designs, and arches and crowns replaced straight lines. Windows took on complex shapes, and glazed Spanish tile adorned fountains and windowsills.

In the 19th century, patios were repurposed for pleasure, with curving masonry flower beds and ornamental plants. Cement added the look of carved stone to fountains and doorways.

The Houses Today

As the houses are adapted to 21st century living, their evolution continues. While many have been converted to hotels and restaurants, private homes still dot the city. Some are restored colonial houses. Others are new houses built with traditional details, though most new fountains are ornamental and cupolas are no longer real chimneys. Builders still use centuries-old materials and craftsmanship, and by and large, the character of the old houses has been preserved. It’s often difficult to tell new houses from authentic old ones.

The houses of Antigua will always be at risk for earthquakes. But through global awareness of the city’s importance to world culture, the persistent efforts of Antigüeño preservationists, and the use of better building methods, the houses have the best-ever chance of survival.

Our world is blessed by the six centuries of architectural heritage carefully preserved in Antigua—whether residents of the city or just visiting, we all are stewards of its future.

“It’s an old house. Three hundred years: that’s something to us on this continent. Almost unconsciously we wonder: who has lived here? What sort of people? What has happened to them?”
—Louis Adamic, writing about Casa Popenoe, The House in Antigua, 1937