“Each and every street south of the Plaza de Armas is interesting, in itself as it is now, and for details of its previous history. Here, at Oficios 94, lived the bishop of the diocese, D. Pedro Agustin Morel de Santa Cruz, who used to take his daily promenade up Obispo, and thereby gave that avenue its name (Bishop Street); it has since been rechristened Pi y Margall, for a Cuban patriot, but nobody heeds the change. On the corner of Mercaderes and Obrapia (Pious Act Street) is the house (its handsome high entrance with coat of arms above it, its stairways, its corridors, its quiet patio, retaining in decay the aristocratic bearing of better days), income from which the owner, D. Martin Calvo de Arrieta, willed, in 1679, to be divided into dowries for five orphan girls yearly; the city is executor and in this capacity still launches five brides per annum so dowered by Don Martin. Lamparilla is the ‘Little Lamp Street’ (in commemoration of a light a devotee of All Souls’ kept burning in the corner of this and Habana in years when there was no public illumination). Here, too, on the corner of Mercaderes and Amagura, is ‘The Corner of the Green Cross.’ The cross is there, and it is green; no painter, furbishing up the house it marks, would venture to give it any other color, though why it should be green nobody knows. It was one of the stations when, before religious processions were prohibited in the streets, good Catholics used to travel the Via Crucis along Amargua (Bitterness) Street from Cristo Plaza at its head to San Francisco Convent at the other end. In the house walls along the way one can distinguish yet where other stations were. Damas is Ladies Street, because of the number of pretty women who at one time made its balconies attractive. Inquisidor was so called because a Commissary of the Inquisition once resided in a house facing upon it, which now the Spanish legation owns and occupies. Refugio (Refuge) got its name because once General Rocafort was caught in a storm and found refuge in the house of a widow named Mendez, who lived there. Here, and in other districts throughout town, not only the streets had names—Empedrado, because it was the first paved; Tejadillo (Little Tile), because a house upon it was the first to have a tiled roof; Blanco (Target), because the artillery school practised there when it was well outside the walled city,—but many corners and crossings had their own particular titles. The corner of Habana and Empedrado was called ‘the Corner of the Little Lamp,’ because in a tobacco shop there shone steadily the only street light of the district. The corner of Compostela and Jesus Maria was ‘Snake Corner,’ because of the picture of a serpent painted on a house wall there. Sol and Aguacate was ‘Sun Corner,’ for a similar reason, and the facade decoration there probably named the whole of Sol (Sun) Street. The block on Amargura between Compostela and Villegas was known as the ‘Square of Pious Women,’ because two very religious ladies lived near, and because, too, of the particular station of the cross located on Amargura at this point.”[3]
Just off the Plaza de Armas is la Fuerza, that quaint fortress constructed by the order of De Soto in 1538. This, which is probably the oldest building of any kind in the City, attracts the greatest amount of attention from visitors. For a long period the fort was the official residence of the governors of the Island, who embellished its interior with handsome furniture, statuary and paintings. As the City grew and more formidable works usurped the protective office which La Fuerza had so capably filled in earlier days, the building was utilized as barracks, storehouse and even jail. The moat was filled in and a high wall raised in its place. During the American occupation the fortress was restored to something like its original form by the replacement of the moat and drawbridge and the restoration of the bastions. At present the building is used as a depository for the national archives.
An excellent view of the harbor may be had from the tower of La Fuerza. The bell in this old tower bears the date 1706. Formerly it sounded the hours throughout the day and night, and was used to give the alarm in time of danger. The guns of the fort have repelled more than one attack, and so highly was the importance of La Fuerza held in the infant period of the colony, that a royal decree
THE CATHEDRAL, HABANA.
required all war vessels entering the harbor to salute the fortification. La Fuerza failed, however, to stop the French pirate De Sores, who captured and partially destroyed it, before firing and sacking the City.
The Cathedral, a short stone’s throw from La Fuerza, is not the largest, nor the most beautiful, nor even the oldest church in Habana, but it has a special interest for the tourist because the bones of Christopher Columbus reposed there until the Spaniards evacuated Cuba, when they carried the relic with them and deposited it in the Cathedral of Seville.
The Cathedral was erected close to the waterfront, in what was then the centre of the City. Originally a Jesuit convent, the building was remodelled and devoted to its present purpose in 1789.