Havana Before Castro by Peter Moruzzi
When Cuba Was a Tropical Playground
in bookstores now
Reviews
Havana Before Castro restores to us a tropical civilization of great music and architecture. It was not lost, fortunately, but only out of sight. Moruzzi's in-depth research allows us to see that an amazing amount of this city remains, despite (and at times because of) fifty years of Castro's rule. Much of the evidence Moruzzi presents is in the ephemeral media of travel brochures, cigar boxes, and swizzle sticks, but the portrait he creates of the city is vivid and solidly three dimensional. In this important book Havana is revealed to be as significant and distinctive as Miami Beach and Las Vegas in telling the story of how recreation and tourism transformed American culture, architecture, and economics.
Alan Hess,
author of Googie Redux and
Oscar Niemeyer: Houses
A fascinating look at Havana, visually rich with hundreds of photos and other unique images, this addition to the literature on one of the world's urban architectural treasures is authored by an architectural historian. Moruzzi's fluid text embellishes the illustrations, drawn mostly from his own collection. Havana enjoys a captivating history, and the legacy of gambling, hotels, drugs, sex, and nightlife makes for an unparalleled reading experience. Moruzzi emphasizes the building boom of the 1950s, when American mob characters benefited from President Fulgencio Batista's corrupt regime and tourists flocked to the enchanted island a mere 90 miles from America, helped by airlines and cruise lines offering tour packages to Havana. The vivid descriptions of casinos and hotels, many still standing, bring a lost era to life. This attractive book is written for a popular audience but is highly recommended for academic as well as public libraries.
At a time when millions eagerly await the post-Castro (Fidel and Raúl) era in Cuba, Peter Moruzzi brings us "Havana Before Castro," a jaunty, poignant portrait of the city in its pre-revolutionary heyday as a Caribbean playground. He has amassed a remarkable array of postcards, vacation snapshots, news photos, hotel brochures, advertising posters, publicity stills and other images that go a long way toward filling in the mental picture of a city that has been enticingly evoked by movies such as "Our Man in Havana" (1959) and "The Godfather: Part II" (1974).
As Mr. Moruzzi's accompanying essays show, the first inkling of Havana's colorful future came in the 1920s, when wealthy Americans flocked to the former Spanish colonial capital, where they could escape the annoyances of Prohibition in land of Barcardi rum. A full-page photo shows chemical tycoon Irénée DuPont's beachside mansion in 1927, and we see the Habana Biltmore Yacht and Country Club in a color postcard. It was after World War II, though, when the real boom began as Havana became a magnet for tourists who didn't necessarily arrive on private yachts. A Pan American Airways pamphlet in 1947 promised: "Carefree Cuba, Pearl of the Antilles, is calling you to share her enticing charms."
Recent Reviews
- Mark Lasswell, The Wall Street Journal
- Alan Hess, author Googie Redux
- Boyd Childress, Auburn University
- Marvin R. Shanken, Cigar Aficionado
- Walter Lippmann, CubaNews
- Philip Peters, The Cuban Triangle
Havana is one of my favorite cities in the world. This book takes a reader through the pre-Castro era in that seaside city, explains why it was once the true playground of the Caribbean. Some day, I hope everyone gets a chance to explore Havana, both old and new. In the meantime, this book can take you there.
Marvin R. Shanken,
Editor & Publisher
Cigar Aficionado
This is a radiantly beautiful book which you'll long treasure as it provides a series of marvelous images, including paintings, photos, artists conceptual drawings and much more, of the Havana of the 50s. It's a loving tribute to that period, its architecture and night-life.
Walter Lippmann,
Editor-in-Chief, CubaNews
...more than a coffee table book about Havana nights in the 1950's...
...the photo archive contained in this book's 250 pages is alone worth the price of admission.
Philip Peters,
The Cuban Triangle
From Phil Peters' The Cuban Triangle blog:
New book on 1950's Havana
A new book arrived in the mail: Havana Before Castro – When Cuba was a Tropical Playground by Peter Moruzzi, published by Gibbs Smith. It's beautifully illustrated with hundreds of images – the author's photos, old advertisements, images dug up from archives. And as the title indicates, it's about the Havana that visitors saw generations ago, so the emphasis is on nightlife, music, and entertainment, with recipes for various cocktails thrown in.
But it's more than a coffee table book about Havana nights in the 1950's. There are chapters on Cuban history and politics, and an interesting chapter on the Mob's role in Batista's Cuba. There's even a diagram showing which casinos and other operations were controlled by Meyer Lansky and Santo Trafficante.
The author is an architectural historian, and it's his fascination with Havana's "built environment" that most shines through. The Hotel Riviera – the "best preserved example of mid-century Las Vegas-influenced Miami Modern resort architecture in the world" – gets its own chapter, full of details and photos about the hotel's design and construction, and its attributes as a destination for visitors. The Riviera was financed and run by Meyer Lansky, who also served, we learn, as its kitchen director. Its architect, Igor Polevitsky, also designed the Shelborne in Miami Beach.
A chapter on the Havana Hilton (now Habana Libre) tells us that the hotel was financed by the pension fund of the Cuban catering workers' union. A statement from Hilton Hotels International lauded the partnership, "unique in the history of private enterprise," where "labor and capital have joined hands" so that the "operators of the hotel will, in effect, be working for their employees."
Another chapter, "Havana Modern," tries to balance the attention paid to Havana's colonial center by focusing on the city's 20th century architecture, particularly its "astounding inventory of Modern architecture." A handy two-page guide, with photos, lists the top 25 attractions, citing their original names and functions, and their addresses. The old Office of the Comptroller is #9 on the list; it's now the Interior Ministry, and may be best viewed from outside.
All in all, a good read, and the photo archive contained in this book's 250 pages is alone worth the price of admission.
