The History of Hotel Marques de Prado Ameno
This beautiful large house located in one of the oldest streets in Old Havana, O´Reilly, today with the number 253 between Cuba and Aguiar, we know for primary documents that, toward 1712, it was already built, arriving to our days typical particulars of an early stage of the development of the Havanan colonial architecture in the housings from one to two plants.
In 1725 it was reconstructed, I date obtained through an imposition, made by Don Gabriel González of Poplar and Toledo, in favor of Santa Clara's Monastery, that it located and it loaded on their high and low houses, of rafas, walls and tiles, new that has manufactured in the Street that goes of the Door of the Convent from Sacred Domingo to the Plazuela of Santa Catalina's Monastery.
Before 1864, year in that dies the IV Marques de Prado Ameno, Don Miguel of Cárdenas and Herrera, it already belonged to the Cárdenas' illustrious lineage. Then the property passes its daughter Mrs. María Teresa of Cárdenas and Chacón, Herrera and Valdés, as well as the succession of the title.
For the tenuta of the dignity marquesal, Mrs. María Teresa, married with Don José María de la Cuesta y Gallol, obtained provisional authorization August of 1864, 18 sent by the General Captain and Civil and Military Governor of the Island of Cuba. At the end of the XIX century the house continued in fee of the succession of this family, arriving with them to the XX one.
In 1898 Mrs. María had died Teresa de Cárdenas y Chacón, leaving as heirs to her husband and children.
In 1904 it is described like a house of high and low, masonry, roof and tiles, in a land that forms a surface of 672 m 78 plane cm. In this same year it is sold by their proprietors, and in 1910, mortgaged in favor of the denominated Society "Amour and Company". They began, also, the first transformations of the beginnings of the last century.
In 1916, other important proprietor of one of the biggest pharmaceutical business in Cuba, and of personal assets, bought the Marqueses de Prado Ameno old house: Don Ernesto Sarrá and Hernández who carried out equally in her some remodeling works, transforming it at vicinity home, with rent rooms. As long as the plant descends it dedicated to commercial functions, counting in her a Printing, where it is said it ended up being published The Official Gazette.
According to the architect Joaquín Weiss, it is a transition example among what was the first half of the XVIII century and the changes originated in second o'clock, when a great economic development allowed an even bloom of the colonial architecture. For what doesn't belong to the most brilliant stage of the one that to make constructive in colonial times, when the enormous and magnificent Houses arose. Palacios like those that appear in our main squares, but to the previous stage.
In the decade of ninety in last century, the house begins to be intervened by the Office of the Historian of the City of Havana, since the recovery of the immovableses for the hotel exploitation, allows to obtain quick and generous resources for the development of the Program of Integral Rehabilitation of the Historical Center.
It is not until the years 2000 that the work charges impulse and you concludes its project and execution to become the Hotel Marques de Prado Ameno, belonging to the Company Habaguanex, of this Office, and added to the economic administration of the Hotel Florida, neoclassicist par excellence. This way, the intervention approach kept between both in mind the communication buildings, serving at the same time as pieces that expose the transition from the XVIII century to the XIX of the Havanan colonial architecture.
