La Casa de Beneficencia y Maternidad de La Habana

Coordinates: 23°08′26.5″N 82°22′16.3″W / 23.140694°N 82.371194°W / 23.140694; -82.371194

La Casa de Beneficencia y Maternidad de La Habana
View from San Lazaro and Belascuain
General information
Type Religious charity
Classification XIX century
Address San Lazaro y Belascoain
Town or city Ciudad de La Habana
Country Cuba Cuba
Named for La Casa Cuna
Construction started 1687
Demolished Late 1950s
Height 26 meters (85 ft)
Technical details
Structural system Load bearing
Material Masonry
Floor count 2
Grounds 360,000 square feet (33,000 m2)

For two hundred and seventy years, La Casa de Beneficencia y Maternidad de La Habana was a repository of unwanted children. A House of Charity got its start due in part to a time when poverty and misery spread through a country in which unemployment, the plundering of the public treasury by corrupt leaders was the norm and little attention was given to social assistance, health, education or the protection of the poor: los desamparados.

History

Dormitory-Casa de Beneficencia y Maternidad de La Habana
Real Casa de Maternidad y Beneficencia emerged as a product of several transitions between "La Casa Cuna", the "Real Casa de Maternidad" and finally "La Casa de Beneficencia", but it was not until 1794, during the government of Luis de las Casas that was located in San Lazaro and Belascuain.
The Casa Cuna had been founded in 1687 by Bishop Diego Evelino Hurtado de Compostela, who died in 1704, leaving the building unfinished due to lack of resources to carry out his efforts.[1] His successor, Bishop Fray Gerónimo de Nosti y Valdés, years later took up his idea and restored the Casa Cuna in a building he built on the corner of Oficios and Muralla.[2] Although the abandonment of the colonial government and the inefficient administration were causes that that establishment did not progress, it nonetheless housed up to 200 orphans.[3]
During the Government of Don Luis de las Casas, by the year 1792 at the initiative of the Countess of Jaruco, the Marquises of Cárdenas de Monte Hermoso, the Marquis of Casa Peñalver and the Bishop of the Provinces of Louisiana and Florida, Don Luis de Peñalver was founded the so-called "Real Casa de Beneficencia", which accepted only females, settling in a cavalry room of land located in front of the San Lázaro cove, an area known as the Betancourt Garden that the Bishop of Peñalver He gave generously for this purpose.
Antonia María Menocal of Habana left at the time of her death death in 1830 a large legacy with the indication that it was to be invested in charitable works. The executor assigned it to the creation of a Maternity House and for the preservation and education of children up to the age of six.[3][4]
The House of Maternity (La Casa de Maternidad) was added to the Beneficiencia on the initiative of Spanish Governor-Gutierrez de la Concha, who administered the island from 1850 to 1852. Its mission was to give refuge to thousands of unfortunate people whose mothers could place their abandoned child in the care of Beneficence. For a long time La Casa de Beneficencia y Maternidad was administered by the Sociedad Económica de Amigos del País and a Board of Trustees.
In 1914 the State assumed the institution which continued to live on the alms and the service of the Daughters of Charity of Cuba. In the middle of the decade of the 50, the State bought and demolished the building, and began the construction in its lands of the National Bank and the Stock Exchange of Havana. Subsequently, the Hermanos Ameijeiras Hospital, the largest health facility in the country was built in place of the former La Casa de Beneficencia.[2][3]

Tradition

The mothers, who abandoned their child for economic reasons or because of the shame of being a single mother, could deliver it without showing their face or revealing their identity.
As the children had no last name upon entering the charity, they were given the surname Valdés. It was Bishop Fray Gerónimo de Nosti y Valdés, successor of Diego Evelino Hurtado de Compostela, who decided to give them his last name: Valdés.[2][3]
The mothers, who abandoned their child for economic reasons or because of the shame of being a single mother, could deliver it without showing their face or revealing their identity. To this end, on Calle Belascoaín, there was a small door concealing a lathe where the infant was placed and turned at the touch of a bell. On the other side the child was received by a nun of the Sisters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul (Hermanas de la Caridad de San Vicente de Paul), the congregation that served this institution.

Personalities

La Casa de Beneficencia gave birth to the protagonist in the novel by Cirilo Villaverde, Cecilia Valdés, a masterpiece of nineteenth-century Cuban literature. Cecilia Valdés is also protagonist of Reinaldo Arenas's La Loma del Angel.[5][6] Real characters that flourished from La Casa de Beneficencia were: the poet Gabriel de la Concepcion Valdés (Plácido), the priest Fray José Olallo Valdés, and the doctor Juan Bautista Valdés, among others.[2]

References

  1. ↑ "LA REAL CASA CUNA DE LA HABANA". Retrieved 2018-09-23.
  2. 1 2 3 4 "La Real Casa de Beneficencia y Maternidad". Retrieved 2018-09-15.
  3. 1 2 3 4 "Casa de Beneficencia y Maternidad". Retrieved 2018-09-14.
  4. ↑ "Anales de la Academia de Ciencias Medicas, Fïsicas y ..., Volumes 40-41". Retrieved 2018-09-23.
  5. ↑ Arenas, Reinaldo. La Loma del Angel. US, 1987. ISBN 978-0-380-75075-7
  6. ↑ Rosell, Sara. “‘Cecilia Valdés’ De Villaverde a Arenas: La (Re)Creación Del Mito De La Mulata.”Afro-Hispanic Review, vol. 18, no. 2, 1999, pp. 15–21. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/41826908.

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