The Neoclassical style: a continuity of colonial rule from Spain to America Puerto Rico was a Spanish colony for four centuries. For Spain, Puerto Rico served primarily as a military stronghold that resulted in the construction of an impressive fortified city. Martial priorities failed to promote the development of a representative government, universities, an organized school system, or extensive agricultural or urban development. Fig. 1 El Morro Castle and fortification. View of Neoclassical main entrance. Mercantilism and centralized authority prevailed under the Spanish regime. The San Fernando Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Madrid approved the designs for all public buildings built in the colonies. The Academy preferred a sober Neoclassical style. In the mid-eighteenth century, this style symbolized enlightenment and represented a newly acquired architectural clarity and simplicity. But the Academy continued to prescribe the Neoclassical style well after its popularity in Spain faded. Historian María de los Angeles Castro states that the rational simplicity of the Neoclassical style was a means of colonial dominance. The architectural elements served as a metaphor between the rhythmic and proportioned part of the building and the regulations of everyday life imposed in the colonial society. 2 The decline of the Spanish Empire in America brought the emergence of monumental Neoclassical architecture to Puerto Rico. By 1850, Cuba and Puerto Rico were the only remaining Spanish colonies in America. Spain invested large sums of money in military and public buildings. In San Juan, the elegant Governor's palace, La Fortaleza, was remodeled in 1842 and during the next four decades, the Treasury Building (Real Intendencia, 1852) , the Ballaja Barracks (1857), the Insane Asylum (1860), the Provincial Hospital (1876) and the Municipal Theater (1878) were built in the Neoclassical style. Fig. 2 La Fortaleza, the Governor's Mansion in San Juan, Puerto Rico remodeled and embellished with a Neoclassical style facade in 1845. As a result of the Spanish-American War, Spain ceded Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines to the United States. The American troops in Puerto Rico promised freedom and a better, more civilized way of life. Puerto Ricans responded to this promise with optimism and anticipation until the American authorities tried to "Americanize" the Island. To accomplish this, Americans had to obliterate the existing cultural system through the establishment of new sociopolitical criteria. It included changing the official government language to English, the separation of Church and State, the substitution of the Island's prevailing legal system with American Law, and the establishment of local government institutions modeled after American civism. To Puerto Ricans, it was soon evident that their lifestyle, beliefs and traditions were threatened with irreversible change. Architecture in Puerto Rico was both exposed to a broader assortment of stylistic influences as a result of the war. A number of the architectural revivals popular in United States proliferated on the Island. The juxtaposition of two cultures created an effervescent architectural milieu. In it, the existing Neoclassical Spanish architecture was in sharp contrast with the new architectural vocabularies imported from the States. Two years after the war ended, the prominent American architectural critic, Montgomery Schuyler, commented on the contrast between American-born architecture and Old World colonial architecture. He warned American architects of a very difficult task before them in the newly acquired possessions: buildings found in San Juan de Puerto Rico, Cuba and the Philippines "set us a standard to which we shall find it troublesome to 'live up'."3 After 1900, the new civilian government in Puerto Rico generated many new building types that required new architecture. These types included an array of buildings needed to house the new government programs. In the American agenda were public school buildings, sanitariums, universities, city halls, municipal hospitals and many other public buildings. American businesses also introduced a domestic architecture that adapted living conditions to the tropical nature of the Puerto Rican landscape. They transplanted the southern plantation cottage to the company towns that sprung up around the sugar mills. 4 Fig. 3 Casa Grande, Administrator's house at the Central Aguirre, 1900. To generate the many designs needed to reconstruct Puerto Rico according to American standards, architects from the United States came to aid Puerto Rican professionals. The public school system provided promising and architecturally-inclined Puerto Ricans with scholarships to study in schools of architecture in the United States. Furthermore, other Puerto Rican students were encouraged to study architecture through American-based correspondence courses. As a result of American teaching, architectural revivals proliferated the Island. Among them was the American Neoclassical tradition. The official architecture implemented by the new colonial power in Puerto Rico was again the Neoclassical style. But the colonial connotations that this style had for the Puerto Ricans is evidenced in a controversy that arose in 1907 over the design of the Capitol Building. An international architectural design competition was held and an all-American jury selected to determine the first three prizes from more than 135 entries. The Capitol Commission, composed of local and American politicians, challenged their recommendations. Puerto Rican politicians argued that the design to be selected should be in the style of the French Renaissance, which for them represented modernity through the use of Fig. 4 Design for the Capitol Building in the style of the French Renaissance by Rafael del Valle Zeno, 1907. old world classicism. 5 As published in La Correspondencia newspaper, the style broke away from "the sullen limitations of the ancient art and allows for freedom, where fantasy finds a broader field, where taste and needs of the present and even the dreams of the future have their reflection in a harmonious ensemble." 6 Even though public opinion favored this style, the jury insisted on selecting a Neoclassical style capitol building. Finally, a compromise was reached and Frank Perkins from New York won the first prize. He submitted a design in a stark Neoclassical style that evoked the Roman Pantheon in the design of its dome and the Greek Parthenon in its portico. 7 Even though Perkins received a substantial first prize of $5,000, this design for the Capitol was never built. Fig. 5 The Capitol Building, winning Neoclasssical design by Frank Perkins, 1907.