THE PANAMA WATER FRONT
Panama is an old city, as American cities run, for it was founded in 1673 when the Bishop marked with a cross the place for the Cathedral. The Bishop still plays a notable part in the life of the town, for it is to his palace in Cathedral Plaza that you repair Sunday mornings to hear the lucky number in the lottery announced. This curious partnership between the church and the great gambling game does not seem to shock or even perplex the Panamanians, and as the State turns over to the church a very considerable percentage of the lottery’s profits it is perhaps only fair for the Bishop to be thus hospitable. If you jeer a well-informed Panamanian on the relations of his church to the lottery he counters by asking suavely about the filthy tenement houses owned by Old Trinity in New York. As a vested right under the Colombian government the lottery will continue until 1918, then expire under the clause in the Panama constitution which prohibits gambling. Drawings are held each Sunday. Ten thousand tickets are issued at a price of $2.50 each, though the custom is to buy one-fifth of a ticket at a time. The capital prize is $7500 with lesser prizes of various sums down to one dollar. The Americans on the Zone buy eagerly, but I could not learn of any one who had captured a considerable prize. One official who systematically set aside $5 a week for tickets told me that, after four years’ playing, he was several hundred dollars ahead “beside the fun”.
THE LOTTERY OFFICE IN THE BISHOP’S PALACE
Though old historically, Panama is modern architecturally. It was repeatedly swept by fires even before the era of overfumigation by the Canal builders. Five fires considerable enough to be called “great” are recorded. Most of the churches have been burned at least once and the façade of the Cathedral was overthrown by an earthquake. The San Domingo Church, the Church and Convent of San Francisco, and the Jesuit Church still stand in ruins. In Italy or England these ruins would be cared for, clothed by pious, or perhaps practical, hands with a certain sort of dignity. Not so in Panama. The San Domingo Church, much visited by tourists because of its curious flat arch, long housed a cobbler’s bench and a booth for curios. Now its owner is utilizing such portions of the ruin as are still stable as part of a tenement house he is building. When reproached for thus obliterating an historic relic he blandly offered to leave it in its former state, provided he were paid a rental equal to that the tenement would bring in. There being no society for the preservation of historic places in Panama his offer went unheeded, and the church is fast being built into the walls of a flat-house. As for the Church of the Jesuits its floor is gone, and cows and horses are stabled in the sanctuary of its apse.
SAN DOMINGO CHURCH AND THE FLAT ARCH
The streets of Panama look older than they really are. The more substantial buildings are of rubble masonry faced with cement which quickly takes on an appearance of age. Avenida Centrale is lined for all but a quarter of a mile of its length with shops, over which as a rule the merchant’s family lives—for the Panamanians, like other Latins, have not yet acquired the New York idea that it is vulgar to live over your own place of business but perfectly proper to live two miles or more away over someone else’s drug store, grocery, stationery store, or what not. There might be an essay written on the precise sort of a business place above which it is correct for an American to live. Of course the nature of the entrance counts, and much propriety is saved if it be on the side front thus genteelly concealing from guests that there are any shops in the building at all. These considerations however are not important in Panama, and many of the best apartments are reached through dismal doors and up winding stairways which seldom show signs of any squeamishness on the part of the domestics, or intrusive activity by the sanitary officers.
