18 



THE CUBA REVI E W, 



Drawing-room in Mr. Edmund G. Vaughan's handsome residence on the Malecon. It is a 

 two-story building of stone, facing the sea, with a fine view of the entrance to Havana Harbor and 

 of the Morro. The Malecon, with its pleasant drive along the sea, is one of the most picturesque 

 and attractive places in the Cuban capital. 



SUBURBS OF HAVANA— VEDADO AND JESUS DEL MONTE. 



The suburbs of Havana have both the 

 old and the new world air, says the New 

 York Evening Post. Reviewed in order 

 of importance and development the first 

 to notice is Vedado, meaning reserva- 

 tion, probably named from having been 

 held as a pleasure place, a deer park or 

 restricted district in the old days. It 

 lies to the west of the city along the 

 gulf of which an extended view may 

 be had by residents on the cazada as 

 the Spanish highways are called, while 

 houses built on the hill back of the 

 turnpike have a fine view of the shore 

 as well as the sea and of the bay to the 

 eastward, with the walls of Morro castle 

 for a background. 



This section has within eight years 

 seen a phenomenal rise in value; a lot 

 that, during the first intervention, was 

 offered to an American here for $400, 

 sold this season for $50,000, it being 

 in what is now the most fashionable 

 district where very beautiful homes are 

 being erected. The "Americanization" 

 that has been said to have been made 



in architecture, consists in having put 

 verandas along the fronts or sides of 

 the houses where an unscreened en- 

 trance or corridor of Spanish fashion 

 or the Italian pergola style was for- 

 merly followed. The interiors of these 

 new houses have also a few American 

 conveniences, such as sanitary plumb- 

 ing, hallways to connect rooms that 

 formerly opened out upon the inner 

 courts or patios, gas stoves, or coal 

 ranges in place of the native fugon 

 (charcoal brazier) and more windows to 

 the outside than are usual in the 

 Latin's idea of a house. In other re- 

 spects the customs of the country are 

 carried out in the new buildings that 

 to a new arrival would look as foreign 

 though not so old, as any other house. 

 Parquets of tiles or marble are the only 

 sensible floors for this climate, where, 

 on a midwinter day, the windows must 

 be open for comfort, and in summer 

 insects must be kept at bay, as they 

 could not be so well from wood floors. 

 Of course, the much traveled and cul- 



