Hotel San Carlos, Havana

The Hotel San Carlos was built in the early 1920s, during the construction boom of small and medium-sized family-run hotels on the island. According to the owner Eladio Tápanes Pérez, the building had comfortable and fresh rooms with independent bathrooms and telephone service. It had elevator service all night; something that appears at the time not all lodgings had; and also had its own mail service. The hotel is said to have reverted to its usual number of guests back in the 1940s. The competition was great, and together with high-class hotels such as the Inglaterra, the Plaza, and the Sevilla. By the 1950s, the hotel mega projects were being built in the Vedado area of ​​the capital, so the San Carlos continued as a simple building with rooms for rent.[1]

In 1960 this family business was not exempt from the Nationalization Law. It was expropriated and converted into family apartments, which gradually destroyed it, as the building was not designed for such purposes, in addition to the fact that it did not have any type of restoration project in later years, a situation that has affected a large number of properties in Cuba to this day. By the 1980s, the building was uninhabited due to its high deterioration.[lower-alpha 1] Today we only have the hotel's name set into the terrazzo floor of what was once its portal, right where the entrance door to the lobby was. Currently, the area occupied by the structure is used as a parking lot for bicycle taxis.[1]

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  San Carlos Hotel seen from Calle Monte
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  San Carlos Hotel Poster, Havana, Cuba
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  San Carlos Hotel, Havana, Cuba
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  San Carlos Hotel, Havana, Cuba

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Wikisource has the text of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica article "Havana".

Hotel San Carlos, Havana Q110967290