{"id":237409,"date":"2021-04-12T12:17:58","date_gmt":"2021-04-12T16:17:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/oncubanews.com\/en\/?p=237409"},"modified":"2021-04-12T12:17:58","modified_gmt":"2021-04-12T16:17:58","slug":"jean-claude-forestier-the-frenchman-who-helped-reshape-havana","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/oncubanews.com\/en\/cuba\/jean-claude-forestier-the-frenchman-who-helped-reshape-havana\/","title":{"rendered":"Jean Claude Forestier: the Frenchman who helped reshape Havana"},"content":{"rendered":"

One hundred years ago, Havana was a fast-growing metropolis that had outstripped the confinements of its old colonial walls. With plush new neighborhoods sprouting up haphazardly in the south and west, the city brimmed with life, creativity, and abundant sugar money, but it lacked an urban development plan. <\/span>Enter Jean Claude Forestier, a French landscape architect who first arrived in the Cuban capital in 1925. <\/span><\/p>\n

Fresh from illustrious commissions in Paris, Seville and Barcelona, Forestier spent the next five years designing shady tree-lined avenues, classical plazas and a harmonious urban environment that highlighted Havana\u2019s important monuments and lush Caribbean setting.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Jean-Claude<\/a>
Jean-Claude Nicolas Forestier (1861-1930)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Machado\u2019s dream<\/b><\/p>\n

Forestier had been invited to Cuba by Carlos Miguel de C\u00e9spedes, the public works minister of President Gerardo Machado.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Remembered today for his dictatorial tendencies and untimely fall from grace, Machado started his eight-year tenure (the so-called Machadato) with a bold programme of public works that included the construction of a cross-country highway and a glittering new parliamentary building – the Capitolio Nacional – inspired by Paris\u2019 pantheon.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In common with other \u2018strongmen\u2019 leaders, Machado was adamant to stamp his personal mark on Cuba. Looking to attract US tourists fed up with the asphyxiating restrictions of Prohibition, he dreamed of turning the new republic into the Switzerland of the Americas crowned with a capital punctuated by monumental buildings. \u2018When it comes to my political legacy, save your words and ink, the stone and marble speak for me and mine\u2019, he later wrote.<\/span><\/p>\n

Fortunately, money wasn\u2019t in short supply. Flush with cash from Cuba\u2019s sugar industry and generous loans from deep-pocketed US financers, Machado pumped US$17 million into the Capitolio. But the huge neoclassical legislature was just one piece in an ambitious jigsaw. To execute the rest, the president needed outside help.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The Havana Masterplan<\/b><\/p>\n

Well into his 60\u2019s by the time he arrived in Cuba in 1925, Forestier was a veteran of numerous international assignments including the redesigning the Champs-de-Mar, the grand gardens beneath the Eiffel Tower.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

His work in Paris with engineer, Adolphe Alphand<\/a> gave him a direct link to Alphand\u2019s mentor Baron Haussmann, the urban planner who had transformed the French capital from a medieval slum into the elegant \u2018City of Light\u2019 starting in the 1850s.<\/span><\/p>\n

During his first trip to Havana in 1925-6, Forestier flew in an airplane above the city to get a better perspective of its size and layout. Collaborating with a mixture of French and Cuban planners including leading Cienfueguero architect, Pedro Mart\u00ednez Incl\u00e1n, he subsequently drew up a masterplan, the \u2018Plan Director de la Habana\u2019, that proposed upgrading large parts of the city with wide boulevards, manicured parks, and grand civic buildings. The aim was to make Havana more liveable and salubrious, a modern city that could lure tourists, attract international attention, and promote Cuba as an ambitious independent republic.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Forestier\u2019s style drew on French beaux arts, the American City Beautiful movement, and the British Garden City movement. Like Haussmann in Paris, he saw green spaces as essential in curtailing overcrowding, enhancing recreation possibilities, and bringing elements of the Cuban countryside into the city.<\/span><\/p>\n

The crux of Forestier\u2019s plan was to ultimately move Havana\u2019s civic center from overcrowded Habana Vieja to the Loma de los Catalanes (today\u2019s Plaza de la Revoluci\u00f3n), a low hill then home to a small chapel. The hill was earmarked for a monumental civic square from which broad avenues would radiate toward the Malec\u00f3n, the airport and the port in the manner of Paris\u2019 Place de \u00c9toile.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Interconnecting parks and boulevards<\/b><\/p>\n

Before he could enact his macro-plan, Forestier was commissioned to undertake the more immediate task of designing the gardens surrounding Machado\u2019s new Capitolio. Incorporating native Cuban flora, including royal palms, into an ordered linear layout reminiscent of Versailles, the Frenchman cleverly blended classical beauty with elements of Havana\u2019s diverse natural environment, a technique that would become his hallmark.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
The Fountain of India and the Capitol, in the surroundings of Havana’s Prado. Photo: Otmaro Rodr\u00edguez<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In the rectangle of land directly to the south of the Capitolio, Forestier was invited to turn an old parade ground into the Parque de la Fraternidad<\/a>. Inaugurated in 1928 for the prestigious Sixth Panamerican Conference attended by US president, Calvin Coolidge, the park was centered around a Ceiba tree planted with soil from 28 American countries.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Next, Forestier set about beautifying the Prado, Havana\u2019s main boulevard. Lined with dense trees, ornate streetlamps, and marble benches, the promenade was embellished with eight bronze lions that guarded the two main sections of the thoroughfare.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Paseo del Prado in Havana. Photo: Otmaro Rodr\u00edguez.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"\"<\/a>
Paseo del Prado streetlight. Photo: Otmaro Rodr\u00edguez<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"\"<\/a>
Paseo del Prado in Havana. Photo: Otmaro Rodr\u00edguez<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Walkways and gardens were applied to the Avenida del Puerto, another esplanade that ran perpendicular to the Prado starting at the jaws of the harbor. Similar treatment was given to Avenida de los Misiones a wide boulevard that swept from the recently finished Presidential Palace down to the harbor mouth.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

With his initial work complete, Forestier had succeeded in creating a continuous line of greenery through Havana stretching from Parque de la Fraternidad, along the Prado, to the port, a vast social space where Habaneros could meet, greet, walk, and talk.<\/span><\/p>\n

Unfinished projects\u00a0\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

Forestier had even bigger green plans for the Vedado neighborhood where he dreamed of installing an expansive city park. The green space \u2013 ambitiously coined the Gran Parque Nacional – never came to fruition although part of it later materialized as the Parque Metropolitano, the thin slice of urban forest that hugs the banks of the Almendares River.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

At the still new university campus, he drew up plans for a dramatic entry staircase and a belvedere (lookout garden). The belvedere was ultimately abandoned, but the staircase \u2013 still affectionately known to thousands of Cuban students as \u2018La Escalinata\u2019 – was built by Cuban architect C\u00e9sar Guerra in 1927.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
The “Alma Mater” at the top of the university stairway, University of Havana. Photo: Christoper Baker.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Forestier\u2019s legacy<\/b><\/p>\n

While Forestier made plenty of character-changing adjustments to Havana\u2019s urban landscape during three separate visits to the Cuban capital in the 1920s, many of his plans were unhinged by the economic crash of 1929, the fall of Machado, and the landscaper\u2019s own death in 1930.<\/span><\/p>\n

His unfinished dreamscape lay dormant for two decades, although many of his proposals were revisited in the 1950s when Havana, with additional input from Cuban architects and planners, ultimately shifted its civic center to the Loma de los Catalanes. The contemporary Plaza de la Revoluci\u00f3n capped with a 112m-tall memorial to Jos\u00e9 Mart\u00ed designed by Aquiles Maza and Juan Jos\u00e9 Sicre stands at the terminus of several Parisian-style boulevards, including Avenida de los Presidentes (Avenida G) and Paseo.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Today, scores of Habaneros, from the taxi drivers who park in Parque de la Fraternidad to the school children who play games on the shady walkways of the Prado, still enjoy the fruits of Forestier\u2019s bold green vision.\u00a0<\/span>Havana is a much richer city for his work.<\/span><\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

Note:<\/p>\n

Bibliography used: \u201cDictator\u2019s Dreamscape: How Architecture and Vision Built Machado\u2019s Cuba and Invented Modern Havana\u201d, de Joseph Hartman (2019).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The audacious green vision of landscape architect Jean Claude Forestier contributed to the urban enrichment of the Cuban capital.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3865,"featured_media":237422,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13902],"tags":[14971,14872],"ppma_author":[34078],"class_list":["post-237409","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cuba","tag-cuban-architecture","tag-havana"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nJean Claude Forestier: the Frenchman who helped reshape Havana | OnCubaNews English<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The audacious green vision of landscape architect Jean Claude Forestier contributed to the urban enrichment of the Cuban capital.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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