File:Standard guide to Cuba - a new and complete guide to the island of Cuba, with maps, illustrations, routes of travel, history, and an English-Spanish phrase book (1909) (14758473476).jpg

Identifier: standardguidetoc00reyn (find matches)
Title: Standard guide to Cuba : a new and complete guide to the island of Cuba, with maps, illustrations, routes of travel, history, and an English-Spanish phrase book
Year: 1909 (1900s)
Authors: Reynolds, Charles B. (Charles Bingham), 1856-1940
Subjects:
Publisher: Havana : New York : Foster & Reynolds
Contributing Library: University of Pittsburgh Library System
Digitizing Sponsor: Lyrasis Members and Sloan Foundation

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tels, and the American Club. On the east is theclub house of the Centro Asturiano and the Albisu Theatre. In Monserrate Plaza, just off from Central Park, at the head ofObispo and OReilly streets, and thus in the very heart of the city life,stands the monument of General Francisco de Albear, the distinguishedCuban engineer whom Havana holds in grateful memory as the author ofthe Vento water system. Albear was born in Havana in 1811, and wasgraduated as civil engineer at Madrid. He served in the Spanish armyand was made commandant in recognition of his mastery of coast defense;but he has left a more beneficent work as his crowning achievement andtitle to fame, the celebrated Vento aqueduct which bears his name. Hedied in Havana in 1889. The justly admired monument is the work of theCuban sculptor Saavedra. The life-size statue is supported upon apedestal which is carved with fasces, wreath and engineering emblems, andbears the dedication, in Spanish: The City of Havana has erected this
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54 THE STANDARD GUIDE. monument to her illustrious son, D. Francisco de Albear y Lara.Havana is symbolized by a dignified female figure bearing on her breastthe castles and the key of the citys escutcheon. Royal palms contributetheir peculiar grace to the setting. That part of the Prado which lies between Central Park and theMalecon was the original Calle del Prado—Street of the Meadow—whichtook its name from the famous Prado of Madrid, celebrated by Lope deVega and other poets. It lay outside the city walls, and like its prototypewas designed for a fashionable promenade and drive. The Prado wasone of the public institutions Governor Tacon gave to Havana, and like somany of the works constructed by him, it was built by convict labor. Inthe books of travelers who visited the town in those days, frequent men-tion is made of the Havana chain gangs. Many of the public buildingswere built and the streets were paved to the clanking of their chains.In Tacons time these workers in stone w

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