10 proven or suspected Luis Barragan works in Chapala

 1930s, 1940s  No Responses »
Nov 132025
 

From the 1930s onwards, several architects, most of them graduates of the Guadalajara engineering school, undertook modernist projects in Chapala. They included Pedro Castellanos Lambley, Juan Palomar y Arias and Ignacio Díaz Morales. But the one who became by far the most famous was Luis Barragán.

Who was Luis Barragán?

Often described as the most influential Mexican architect of the twentieth century, Luis Barragán Morfín (1902–1988) was raised in Guadalajara and graduated as an engineer from the city’s Escuela Libre de Ingenieros in 1923. During an extensive trip to Europe and Morocco, Barragán heard lectures by Le Corbusier and became familiar with the ideas and work of Ferdinand Bac. Inspired by their modernist approach, he returned to Guadalajara in 1926, where he initially worked alongside his brother—Juan José (who had worked with Birger Winsnes as an engineer building the La Capilla-Chapala railroad line and who later developed a close business association with Castellanos Lambley)—before establishing his own architectural practice.

In 1936, after about a decade of projects in Guadalajara and Chapala, Luis Barragán moved to Mexico City, where he designed and developed the residential area of Jardines del Pedregal. His house and studio, completed in 1948, are now a UNESCO World Heritage site. Barragán was also responsible, with partners, for Torres de Satélite (1957) and the residential areas of Las Arboledas and Lomas Verdes, all in the proximity of Ciudad Satélite in the state of México.

In his seventies, Barragán was granted a solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City (1976) and won the prestigious Pritzker Architecture Prize (1980), the only Mexican ever to do so.

Following his death in 1988, Barragán’s ashes were interred in the Rotunda de los Jaliscienses Ilustres in Guadalajara. In a macabre twist, some of his ashes were later turned into a diamond ring by American conceptual artist Jill Magid, whose documentary, The Proposal, details her bizarre attempt to exchange the ring for the Barragán archives, currently in private hands in Switzerland, and repatriate them to Mexico.

Here is a list of proven or suspected Barragán works in Chapala, as well as some Barragán proposals that were never acted upon:

The Bynner House, Chapala, 2016. Photo: Tony Burton.

Casa Barragán (aka the Bynner house), Chapala, 2016. Photo: Tony Burton.

1. Avenida Madero #411 (Casa Barragán, aka the Witter Bynner house)

A few buildings north of the main church, and on the same side of Avenida Madero, Casa Barragán had belonged to the Barragán family, who owned a hacienda in the hills on the south side of the lake, since the end of the nineteenth century. The family used their Chapala house as a staging point on trips to and from Guadalajara. In 1931-32, Luis Barragán, ably assisted by colleague Juan Palomar y Arias, transformed the original residence here into an interesting two-story modernist home. Eight years later, Casa Barragán was bought as a vacation home by the American poet Witter Bynner. Though the house has been remodeled several times since, including by Bynner—who installed large windows in his study and added a rooftop mirador to get a view of the lake—it retains several distinctive Barragán design elements.

2. Avenida Madero #232

Definitive attribution of this building to Luis Barragán is, as yet, unproven. At the end of the nineteenth century, this property was the site of a rustic inn called Mesón de la Purisima. In April 1932, when Luis Barragán and his siblings were settling their father’s estate, five of the six siblings—engineers Juan José and Luis, lawyer Daniel, and their two sisters, Luz and Paz—sold Mesón de la Purísima to their brother, Alfonso. Three years later, in October 1935, when Alfonso sold it to Carlota Bohnstedt de Monteverde, the new deed stated that the original building had been torn down and replaced by a new house. It seems fairly likely, in my opinion, that this would have been designed by Luis Barragán, perhaps assisted by his brother Juan José. This property, remodeled more than once since the 1930s, became the Plaza Hotel Chapala in 2019.

Sketch by Luis Barragán for Casa Newton. (Federica Zanco: "Luis Barragán: la revolución callada," p 55.)

Sketch by Luis Barragán for Casa Newton. (Federica Zanco: “Luis Barragán: la revolución callada,” p 55)

3. Avenida Hidalgo #250 (Villa Niza, later known as Casa Newton)

This elegant residence, dating from 1919, was originally designed by Guillermo de Alba for Andrés Somellera, a Guadalajara businessman. Its strong geometric design boasts only minimal exterior ornamentation. The ideas proposed in 1934 by Luis Barragán (sketch above) were never carried out.

4. Kiosk, Central Plaza

In that same year, 1934, Barragán designed a new kiosk (below) for the main plaza in Chapala, then located about a block south of the current central plaza. Though I’ve never seen any supporting documentary evidence (beyond a brief mention in Barragan: The Complete Works), the kiosk was apparently constructed and installed. The original plaza was relocated during the extensive remodeling of the town center at the end of the 1940s. The kiosk was not installed in the new plaza, and its current whereabouts, if it survived, are unknown.

Barragan. 1934. Design for Chapala kiosko. (Credit: Raúl Rispa, et al, 2003)

Barragan. 1934. Design for Chapala kiosk. (Credit: Raúl Rispa, et al, 2003)

5. Paseo Ramón Corona #10

Guadalajara architect Juan Palomar Verea (grandson of Juan Palomar y Arias, who worked closely with Luis Barragán on the transformation of Casa Barragán) has identified this building (sandwiched between two properties remodeled by Pedro Castellanos Lambley in the 1930s) as a project undertaken by Barragán in about 1934 for Gustavo R Cristo, a former mayor of Guadalajara. Numerous renovations since mean that few signs, if any, of Barragán’s input remain today.

6. Paseo Ramón Corona #14 (Villa Robles León)

Villa Robles León, which still stands, was an existing older building remodeled in a joint project in the 1930s by Luis Barragán and Ignacio Díaz Morales into a modernist residence, readily identifiable by its highly distinctive rounded sides. It was the vacation home (looking directly onto the beach at the time) of Emiliano Robles León (1888–1961), a notable lawyer, notary and academic in Guadalajara. Barragán made extensive changes and added a third story to create the equivalent of a master bedroom (with its own bathroom) on the top level. Unlike most homes in Chapala, the arched entrance way to the property is positioned off-center at one extremity of its southern boundary wall, a wall made of long, thin bricks arranged as a series of “V”s forming a geometric wave design. Several aspects of Barragán’s redesign were apparently inspired by a boat.

Casa de las Cuentas, 1941. (Credit: Goldsmith, 1941)

Casa de las Cuentas, 1941. (Credit: Goldsmith, 1941)

7. Calle Zaragoza #307 (Casa de las Cuentas, aka the D. H. Lawrence house)

Casa de las Cuentas is where D. H. Lawrence resided for a few weeks in 1923 while writing the initial draft of The Plumed Serpent. This originally nineteenth century residence was remodeled by Barragán in about 1940, when it was owned by Gustavo R. Cristo. Barragán’s work here was featured the following year in House and Garden. His striking “halfmoon entrance gateway, with heavy wooden grill work painted red outside and French blue inside” added an Oriental touch, characteristic of much of his work of this period. He also designed a spectacular rounded bay window for the dining room, with built-in steel shelves for a collection of hand-blown glass. The house was since been extensively remodeled more than once, gathering links to several other famous writers and artists along the way. Today, it is the Hotel Villa QQ.

8. Avenida Hidalgo #251 (Jardín del Mago)

Almost opposite Villa Niza is Jardín del Mago, a small residence nestled in a terraced garden. A stone dog guards the gate of this interesting property. The unpretentious house and garden, thought to date from about 1940, has a close link to Luis Barragán: it was the Chapala vacation home of his sister Luz and her husband, Alfredo Vázquez Tello, an architect turned antiquities dealer based in Guadalajara. Architect Juan Palomar Verea believes that Luis Barragán personally oversaw the creation of this garden with its extensive terraces and plantings covering around 5000 square meters of the lower slopes of Cerro San Miguel, and it is possible that Barragán also had some input into the simple, functionalist, multilevel residence. Palomar considers this is “one of the most important Mexican gardens of all time,” and represents a key link in style and date between the gardens of Ferdinand Bac (under whom Barragán studied in Europe in 1922) and Barragán’s own internationally acclaimed Jardines del Pedregal de San Ángel (1948) in Mexico City. If Palomar is correct, the Jardin del Mago shows how Barragán, even early in his career, had already begun to develop the individual style that would later lead to world fame.

9. Avenida Hidalgo #246 (Villa Adriana)

Villa Adriana, designed by Pedro Castellanos Lambley, was completed by Luis Barragán in about 1947 for its then owners: Jesús González Gallo (Jalisco state governor, 1947–1953) and his wife, Paz Gortázar (sister of María Luisa Gortázar, the wife of Luis’s brother Alfonso). This magnificent building, created by two of the region’s most famous architects, has been impeccably maintained to this day.

10. Subdivision of a lot on Calle Guerrero (1963)

Along with #1, #3 and #7, this is one of four Barragán projects in Chapala included on the List of Works published by The Barragán Foundation, based in Switzerland. The Curator of the Foundation, Martin Josephy, kindly responded to my email query about this entry to explain that it comprised “a small number of variants for the subdivision of a plot of ca. 1500 square meters along Calle Guerrero.” While its precise location remains to be determined, there is no evidence that this project was ever carried out.

Most existing listings of the ‘complete works’ of Luis Barragán, Mexico’s greatest twentieth century architect, clearly need to be revised to reflect the rightful place of Chapala in the history of Mexican architecture!

Note: Despite its name, the location of the hotel-restaurant named “Casa Barragán,” (Paseo Ramón Corona #13, Chapala) has no known connection to the architect. This property was originally the site of the distinctive two-story Villa Carmen, built by Roberto de la Mora in the final decade of the nineteenth century; its later names included Villa Margarita and Villa Sergio. The original building was demolished prior to the 1950s.

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Six chapters of If Walls Could Talk: Chapala’s Historic Buildings and Their Former Occupants —translated into Spanish as Si las paredes hablaran: Edificios históricos de Chapala y sus antiguos ocupantes— relate to residences designed or modified by Luis Barragán. They include more detailed accounts of Casa Barragán (the Witter Bynner house), Villa Adriana, Villa Niza (Casa Newton), Jardín del Mago, Villa Robles León and Casa de las Cuentas (D.H. Lawrence house).

Sources

  • Anon. 1935. “Recent Work of a Mexican Architect- Luis Barragán.” Architectural Record (New York), January, 1935, 33-46.
  • Jose Alvarez Checa, Luis Barragan, Manuel Ramos Guerra. 1991. Obra construida. Luis Barragán Morfín. 1902-1988. Sevilla, Spain: Junta de Andalucía. Consejeria de Obras Publicas y Transportes.
  • Goldsmith, Margaret O. 1941. “Week-end house in Mexico.” House and Garden, vol 79 (May 1941), 44-45.
  • Rispa, Raúl and Antonio Toca. 2003. Barragan: The Complete Works. Princeton Architectural Press.
  • Palomar Verea, Juan. 2019. “Chapala: primera de las cuatro casas que Luis Barragán hizo para sí mismo.” El Informador, 10 July 2019.
  • Zanco, Federica. 2014. Luis Barragán: la revolución callada. SKIRA.

Comments, corrections and additional material are welcome, whether via comments or email.

The literary and artistic connections of Avenida Madero #232 in Chapala

 1920s and earlier, 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s onwards  4 Responses »
Sep 112025
 

Arriving in Chapala in 1895, Italian count Guiseppe Antona and his friends dismounted at the ‘Inn of the Nueva Purissima’ (sic) which was “more suited to be called a stable than anything else,” since the rooms had no windows. Antona had arrived at a building (long since demolished) known as Mesón de la Purísima, believed to have been located where Avenida Francisco I Madero #232 is today. By a curious twist of fate, the replacement building, dating from the early 1930s, has once again become a hostelry, though one offering a far superior level of accommodation.

Antona-Image

Sketch of Chapala, perhaps by Antona, published in The Detroit Free Press, 1895.

In about 1904, Meson de la Purisima, valued at $1000 pesos, was described as being about 1400 square meters in area, with a covered passageway, a patio, eight stables and nine terraced areas. It is unclear who owned it at that time. However, by 1930 the property was owned by Juan José Barragán, the widower of María de los Angeles Morfín de Barragán (1867-1926).

Following Juan José Barragán’s death in Chicago in April 1930, the property was one of several inherited by their six children. In April 1932, five of the six—engineers Juan José and Luis, lawyer Daniel, and their two sisters, Luz and Paz—sold Mesón de la Purísima to their brother, Alfonso, for $1000 pesos. Mesón de la Purísima (then Calle del Muelle #25) was listed at that time as a roughly rectangular property extending about 50 meters west from its 22.7 meters of street frontage to the east.

Three years later, Alfonso Barragán sold the property to Carlota Bohnstedt de Monteverde for $8000 pesos. The increase in value is noteworthy, but the new deed in October 1935 made it clear that the original building had been torn down and replaced by a new house with the (then) address of Madero #30.

This scenario raises two especially interesting questions. First, who designed and built the new house? And, secondly, who was Carlota Bohnstedt de Monteverde?

A forgotten work by Luis Barragán?

It seems highly likely that Alfonso would have entrusted the building of his new house to one or both of his engineer brothers. Oldest brother Juan José (1897-1975) had designed and built homes in Guadalajara, and had been closely involved in numerous other major projects, including the construction of the La Capilla-Chapala railroad, completed in 1920. Luis (1902-1988), a couple of years younger than Alfonso, had returned from Europe to dedicate himself to developing his skills as an architect. Recognized today as the most influential Mexican architect of the twentieth century, Luis had a solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City in 1976, and is the only Mexican ever to have won the prestigious Pritzker Architecture Prize. The two brothers had worked together briefly in Guadalajara before Luis established his own architectural practice.

Following his father’s death in 1930, Luis had spent 1931-32 transforming the family home (Avenida Madero #411) in Chapala into a modernist residence, ably assisted in the process by his talented colleague Juan Palomar y Arias. The revitalized residence was bought by American poet Witter Bynner in 1940. By 1934, Luis had also drawn up some ideas (never executed) for Villa Niza in Chapala (Avenida Hidalgo 250) for the Newton family, and had completed a significant remodeling for Gustavo Cristo’s lakefront vacation home at Paseo Ramón Corona #10.

But what was Luis doing between 1932 and 1934? This gap in his timeline coincides neatly with when brother Alfonso was replacing Mesón de la Purísima, so it seems highly probable that Luis was involved in that major project, too. If this can ever be proven to be the case, it would add one more building to the list of homes designed, transformed or remodeled by this illustrious Mexican architect.

Charlotte (Carlota) Bohnstedt de Monteverde

The story of Charlotte Bohnstedt de Monteverde (birth name Gertrud Adelheid Eva Gottliebe Charlotte Bohnstedt) is equally intriguing. Born in Berlin, Germany, in 1889 to Gertrud Hientzsch and Max Bohnstedt, Charlotte was only an infant when Max abandoned the family and moved to New York, where he initially worked as a clerk. Shortly after Max was granted US citizenship, he and Gertrud divorced.

In about 1904, Max moved to Mexico and settled in Guadalajara. Known in Mexico as Máximo, he worked for a time as manager of the popular Hotel Cosmopolita, overlooking Plaza San Francisco and the then terminus of the Mexican Central Railway. (The hotel was owned by German businessman Francisco Fredenhagen, who has numerous interesting links to Chapala.)

In 1906, The Mexican Herald announced that Máximo Bohnstedt had been appointed manager of the Lake Chapala Navigation company, following the death of former manager Julio Lewells.

Somehow, Máximo was able to buy the La Alemana cantina, which occupied the ground floor of the Hotel Alemán, which adjoined the Cosmopolita. He immediately advertised for a first class cook willing to invest $300 to $500 to run a restaurant alongside his ‘established’ bar. This legendary cantina, with its outstanding German food, flourished for decades, before finally closing a few years ago.

Hotel Bohnstedt. Photographer and date unknown.

Hotel Bohnstedt and Cantina Alemana. Photographer and date unknown.

In about 1909, Máximo acquired the entire building, and renamed it Hotel Bohnstedt. Between the bar, hotel, and a related sideline in trading Mexican curios and relics, Máximo apparently amassed a small fortune.

Máximo never remarried and, when he died in April 1923, left all his real estate and personal property to Charlotte, his only child. Three months later, 34-year-old Charlotte, accompanied by her mother, left Germany and moved to Guadalajara to administer his assets.

In 1929, Charlotte (known in Mexico as Carlota) married Alfonso Monteverde, a Sonora-born resident of Los Angeles. The couple lived with Gertrud in Guadalajara, and Alfonso administered the La Alemana cantina. Carlota registered her marriage and assets formally in Mexico, and made it abundantly apparent that she and Alfonso had agreed to bienes separados (separate property). The document listing Carlota’s real estate portfolio in Guadalajara is the longest list of its kind I have ever seen.

El Informador, the Guadalajara daily, reported that Carlota and Alfonso spent the summer of 1942 in Chapala, which coincides nicely with when she purchased the Alfonso Barragán house. At that time, Carlota also owned other property in Chapala, including an undeveloped lot on the eastern side of Francisco I. Madero.

Later occupants of Madero 232

It is not yet clear when Carlota Bohnstedt sold the property. But, by 1951, the ‘Salazar’ house (as it was then called) was rented by the musical and artistic Campbell family, who had retired to Chapala. The Campbell family—comprised of four siblings: Hilary, Elsa, Amy and their brother, Alan—lived here for five years while Amy and Alan designed and built a brand new home at Calle Niza #10, near the chapel of Nuestra Señora de Lourdes. In 1957, a year after they moved in, Life magazine’s Leonard McCombe photographed them at their new home for a photo essay documenting the American community at Lake Chapala. In 1976, Hilary Campbell, the last surviving family member, donated—in memory of her sister Elsa who had died a decade earlier—the family Baldwin grand piano to the Lake Chapala Auditorium for its grand opening.

Avenida Madero #232, August 2013. Credit: Google Street View.

Avenida Madero #232, August 2013. Credit: Google Street View.

Though there are currently substantial gaps in the timeline of this building, it was later used for many years as the Chapala branch of the Guadalajara-based investment firm Allen W. Lloyd (which later merged with Actinver). In 2019, following some remodeling, the property became Plaza Chapala Hotel, a beautifully appointed boutique hotel.

From rustic inn of dubious merits in the 1890s to a luxury boutique hotel in the 2020s! Who would have thought it?

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The stories of dozens of other historic buildings in Chapala are told in If Walls Could Talk: Chapala’s Historic Buildings and Their Former Occupants (also in Spanish as Si las paredes hablaran: Edificios históricos de Chapala y sus antiguos ocupantes). Lake Chapala: A Postcard History uses reproductions of more than 150 vintage postcards to explain why and how Lake Chapala became such an important international tourist destination.

Acknowledgment

Kudos to Rogelio Ochoa Corona, whose long-running series of short video cápsulas about Chapala deserves the widest possible audience, for bringing the early land ownership details of this property to my attention.

Sources

Comments, corrections and additional material welcome, whether via comments feature or email.

Chapala owes much to multi-talented architect Guillermo de Alba

 1920s and earlier, 1930s  1 Response »
Oct 092024
 

Despite not being a native of Chapala, Guillermo de Alba (1874–1935) left a diverse and rich legacy in the city. De Alba was born in Mexico City. After his family moved to Guadalajara, de Alba attended the Escuela Libre de Ingenieros, from which he graduated as an Ingeniero Topógrafo (engineer-surveyor) in 1895. [At that time the school did not offer any professional qualification as an architect.]

It is evident from the accounts of de Alba’s grandson—Martín Casillas, a prominent author and novelist, who has published several works relating to his grandfather—that, after graduating, Guillermo de Alba spent some time in Chicago where he was influenced by the Chicago School of architecture. (The Chicago School was a style or movement, not an institution.) In Chicago, de Alba likely studied recently completed buildings, and perhaps met the two most famous proponents of the Chicago school: Dankmar Adler and Louis H. Sullivan (‘form follows function’), who had dissolved their own architectural partnership in 1894, a year or two before de Alba’s visit.

By 1898, de Alba, still in his early twenties, was living in Chapala and working in construction with Manuel Henríquez. De Alba married Maclovia de Cañedo y González de Hermosillo (1859-1933) in Chapala in 1900, and their only child, Guillermina, was born two years later.

In the first two decades of the twentieth century, de Alba designed and built numerous fine residences and commercial buildings in Guadalajara and Chapala, before moving to live in Mexico City in 1926.

His works in Guadalajara included the Hotel Fenix, Casa Abanicos and Villa Guillermina, but the most dramatic of all, in terms of impact on the city, was the major project to develop Colonia Moderna, a new ‘garden city’ neighborhood.

Villa Cristina (1903)

At Lake Chapala, de Alba’s earliest large project was to design a country residence, originally named Villa Cristina, at the eastern end of the lake near Hacienda Cumuato, for José G. Castellanos and his wife, Cristina, in 1903. This building was later acquired by Joaquín Cuesta Gallardo and his wife, Antonia Moreno Corcuera. After decades in ruins, efforts are now apparently underway to restore the property, commonly known as Hacienda Maltaraña.

Not long afterwards, De Alba was asked by Ignacio Arzapalo to design a major hotel in the then small settlement of Chapala. Arzapalo already owned the Hotel Arzapalo, the area’s earliest purpose-built hotel, which opened in 1898, and had realized that Chapala needed another large hotel if it was to satisfy the growing demand for rooms. The de Alba-designed Hotel Palmera was completed in 1907. De Alba’s other works in Chapala include Mi Pullman (1908), a remodeling of Villa Ave María (1919), Villa Niza (1919), and the Chapala Railroad Station (1920).

Hotel Palmera (1907)

Hotel Palmera, c. 1908. Photo: Calpini.

Hotel Palmera, c. 1908. Photo: Calpini.

The 60-room Hotel Palmera, built at a cost of $100,000, was completed in 1907, and opened the following year. It was described at the time as a “modern construction, brick, iron and cement”, with “fine woodwork,” “American furnishings, electric bells” and a “dining room for 400 people.” Following a change of ownership in the 1920s, the building was divided into two independent hotels. The southern wing, purchased by Ramón Nido and his Mexican wife, Sara, reopened in 1930 as the Hotel Nido. In 2001, this wonderful old building was repurposed as the town’s Palacio Municipal. The building’s stairwell has a magnificent 240-square-meter mural by talented and energetic Ajijic artist Efrén González depicting local history.

Mi Pullman (1908)

Mi Pullman, 2019. Credit: Tony Burton

Mi Pullman, 2019. Photo: Tony Burton

Built on an unusually narrow lot, Mi Pullman, at Aquiles Serdán #28, is one of the most distinctive private residences in Chapala. This tall, skinny building, inspired by a Pullman rail car, was built as de Alba’s family home. Its construction, which began in 1907, was completed in June 1908. The house-warming party for the completed residence was a grand formally attired affair, as was to be expected given the owner’s growing reputation as an architect.

By the 1990s (and several owners later) the building had fallen into a terrible state of repair, before its potential was recognized by English-born Rosalind Chenery. Chenery eventually purchased the building, and restored this intriguing narrow Art Nouveau townhouse to its former glory, inside and out. It retains many original fixtures and fittings, including oak wood parquet flooring, stained glass windows, tile floors and a cast iron bath tub. Chenery’s multi-part account of her extraordinary achievement can be read on MexConnect, starting with Mi Pullman: remodeling a Mexican Art Nouveau townhouse.

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Pier (1908)

In 1908, Guillermo de Alba was entrusted with adding steps to the east side of Chapala pier (which had been completed a decade earlier), and with some renovations to its surrounds.

Calle Lourdes (1909)

Guillermo de Alba was commissioned in 1909 by Aurelio González Hermosillo, the owner of Villa Montecarlo, to lay out a new street, lined with palm trees, named La Calzada de las Palmas. On the final day of that year, the street was the scene of a hill-climbing contest for automobiles. The vehicle which made it all the way to the top, and won the competition, was a German-made Protos with five passengers driven by Benjamín Hurtado. The short street is known today as Calle Lourdes.

Street plan of Chapala (1915)

Guillermo de Alba's 1915 street plan of Chapala. (Chapala archives)

Guillermo de Alba’s 1915 street plan of Chapala. (Chapala archives)

We are indebted to de Alba for the earliest known street plan of Chapala, dating from 1915. This is an immensely valuable historical document, indicating the then limits of the small but growing settlement.

Automobile road (1916)

When fund raising began in 1916 to build a new automobile road between Guadalajara and Chapala, de Alba was elected the group’s treasurer. Several prominent individuals each gave $5000 to supplement a state government grant of $23,300. The new road made it much easier for wealthy families to visit Chapala, even if only for a day, or over a weekend.

Photography and Chapala’s first tennis court (1918)

Guillermo de Alba. 1918. Tennis match, Chapala. (Aquellos tiempos en Chapala)

Guillermo de Alba. 1918. Tennis match, Chapala. (Aquellos tiempos en Chapala)

The lakefront restaurants immediately west of the Beer Garden in Chapala occupy property that was once used for the area’s earliest lawn tennis courts. They were laid out by Guillermo de Alba in 1918, just after the end of the first world war, and financed by Ramón Castañeda y Castañeda, whose daughter, Margarita, had learned to play tennis “at one of the best schools in England” and was one of the top players in Guadalajara.

Besides his work as an engineer-architect, de Alba was also an excellent photographer. We are indebted to him for some fine pictures of Chapala dating from the early years of the twentieth century.

In 1920, Guillermo de Alba helped a fellow photographer—José Edmundo Sánchez—open Pavilion Monterrey, a beachfront bar where food and drinks were served in an open-air pavilion, located mid-way between the Hotel Arzapalo (the Beer Garden today) and the Braniff mansion (Cazadores restaurant).

Villa Ave María (1919)

Villa Ave María, 1919. Credit: Guillermo de Alba

Villa Ave María, 1919. Photo: Guillermo de Alba

At Aquiles Serdán #27, across the street from Mi Pullman, is Villa Ave María. It is believed that Guillermo de Alba remodeled an existing building on this site in 1919 to create the stately villa shown in the image. Ninety years later, following many modifications, this building was registered as a three-unit condominium.

Villa Niza (1919)

Villa Niza, c. 1920. Credit: José Edmundo Sánchez

Villa Niza, c. 1920. Photo: José Edmundo Sánchez

Villa Niza, at Hidalgo #250, was designed by Guillermo de Alba for Guadalajara businessman Andrés Somellera. Completed in 1919, the house makes the most of its lakeshore position with a mirador (look out) atop its central tower offering sweeping panoramic views over the gardens and lake. De Alba’s strong geometric design boasts only minimal exterior ornamentation. Villa Niza has been well maintained over the years and retains many of its original interior features.

Chapala Railroad Station (1920), now the Centro Cultural González Gallo

Centro Cultural González Gallo (former Chapala Railroad Station), 2019. Photo: Tony Burton

Centro Cultural González Gallo (former Chapala Railroad Station), 2019. Photo: Tony Burton

The crowning glory of Guillermo de Alba’s architectural career in Chapala was the elegant and imposing former Chapala Railroad Station, now the Centro Cultural González Gallo. Work on this building began in 1918, commissioned by visionary Norwegian entrepreneur Christian Schjetnan as the terminus for the La Capilla-Chapala railroad, and was completed in 1920. While Schjetnan envisioned that this grand station terminus would be a focal point for a major hotel, magnificent park and scores of beautiful residences—a breathtakingly ambitious idea—the rest of the project never made it beyond the drawing board. The railroad closed in 1926 and the station building eventually fell into disuse. Restoration of the historic building began in 1998, and it was reopened as a Cultural Center in 2006. It retains some original flooring and architectural details, though tall glass panels were added to protect the formerly open station vestibule from any adverse weather.

Cerro de San Miguel (1930s)

After moving from Chapala to Mexico City in 1926, de Alba worked as a draftsman in the Secretaría de Recursos Hidráulicos drawing designs for bridges and dams. He retained a keen interest in Chapala, and was asked in 1931 by the town’s then mayor, Basulto Limón, to design a walkway to the top of Cerro San Miguel with shelters and pergolas near the top to serve the needs of visitors who climbed the hill for the panoramic view. Sadly, this plan was apparently never carried out.

Did Guillermo de Alba design the Hotel Arzapalo (1898)?

Though the design of the Hotel Arzapalo, which opened in 1898, has sometimes been attributed to Guillermo de Alba (including in a display honoring de Alba in the Centro Cultural González Gallo), his name does not feature in any of the contemporaneous accounts of the hotel’s construction or opening celebration. For this reason—and others detailed in If Walls Could Talk—I do not believe that de Alba designed the Hotel Arzapalo, though it is possible that he helped with its construction. The claim may have arisen from a misreading of this (admittedly ambiguous) sentence on page 116 of Antonio de Alba‘s Chapala: “A los 7 años, habiendo progresado la empresa, edifice el mismo Sr. Arzapalo, bajo la dirección del Ing. Guillermo de Alba otro hotel, el ‘Hotel Palmera.'” (“After 7 years, the business having progressed, the same Mr Arzapalo built, under the direction of Engineer Guillermo de Alba another hotel, the ‘Hotel Palmera.'”)

Regardless of who designed the Hotel Arzapalo, Guillermo de Alba made an incomparable contribution to Chapala’s history and heritage, bequeathing us several superb buildings which have not only withstood the test of time but which are still worthy of our admiration more than a century after they were first built.

Note: More details of these projects can be found in If Walls Could Talk: Chapala’s Historic Buildings and Their Former Occupants, translated into Spanish as Si las paredes hablaran: Edificios históricos de Chapala y sus antiguos ocupantes. My 2022 book Lake Chapala: A Postcard History uses reproductions of more than 150 vintage postcards to tell the incredible story of how the small village of Chapala morphed into an international tourist and retirement center.

Sources

  • El Informador: 17 Oct 1918, 1.
  • J. Jesús González Gortázar. 1992. Aquellos tiempos en Chapala. Guadalajara: Editorial Agata.
  • Jaime Álvarez del Castillo (coordinator). 2002. Arquitecto Guillermo de Alba. Editorial Agata / Fotoglobo.
  • María Dolores Traslaviña García. 2006. Guillermo de Alba. Gobierno de Jalisco Secretaría de Cultura.
  • Brigitte Boehm Schoendube (coord.), Cartografía Histórica del Lago de Chapala.

Comments, corrections and additional material are welcome, whether via comments or email.

Acclaimed watercolorist Millard Sheets visited Chapala several times, starting in 1947

 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s  3 Responses »
Aug 312023
 

Renowned American painter, educator, designer and architect Millard Owen Sheets was born in Pomona, California, on 24 June 1907, and died in Anchor Bay, California, on 31 March 1989.

Details of his biography are readily available online, at Wikipedia and at the website of the California Watercolor gallery.

But, in summary, Sheets studied at the Chouinard Art Institute, where, even before graduating, he was exhibiting watercolors in the annual shows of the California Water Color Society and teaching watercolor techniques at Chouinard.

Millard Sheets. 1983. Lake Chapala, Mexico. Reproduced by kind permission of California Watercolor gallery.

Note: Giclées of this painting are available via the website of the California Watercolor Gallery

He exhibited widely across the U.S. and Europe, and gained national recognition as a fine watercolorist. His life, work and painting style made the pages of Art Digest, Eyes on America and a book published by Dalzell Hatfield in Los Angeles in 1935.

During the second world war, Sheets was an artist-correspondent for Life magazine and served with the United States Army Air Forces in India and Burma.

As an art educator, Sheets worked at Chouinard Art Institute, Scripps College, and was Director of Otis Art Institute (1953-1960), fomenting the development of hundreds of young artists.

Millard Sheets. Chapala Church. (EBay photo)

Millard Sheets. Chapala Church. (EBay photo)

Later in life he designed and executed dozens of major mosaic and mural projects. His commissions ranged from Los Angeles City Hall to Detroit Public Library, the Mayo Clinic, the mosaic dome and chapel at the National Shrine in Washington DC, and the Hilton Hotel in Honolulu, Hawaii.

Works by Sheets are in the permanent collections of many major museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Whitney Museum (both in New York; the Chicago Art Institute; the National Gallery (Washington D.C.); the DeYoung Museum (San Francisco); and the Los Angeles County Museum.

Sheets made multiple visits to Chapala between 1947 (believed to be the first time he visited the lake) and the early 1980s.

Millard Sheets.1979. Noon, Chapala. Reproduced by kind permission of California Watercolor gallery.

Note: Giclées of this painting can be purchased on the website of the California Watercolor Gallery

Sheets’ 1947 trip to Chapala was in the company of long-time friend Merritt (‘Muggs’) Van Sant (1898-1964) and fellow artist, master woodworker and designer Sam Maloof (1916-2009), who was working for Sheets at the time and had learnt Spanish as a child from a Mexican-born housekeeper. Interviewed in 2002 by Mary MacNaughton for the Archives of American Art, Maloof recalled, albeit all too briefly, their trip to Chapala:

“… we flew to Guadalajara and I could have stayed for three years for what it cost us for three weeks. Of course it had to be the best hotel rooms and I had a room by myself. Millard and Muggs Van Zandt [Sant] had a room together and we had to rent a car. They had a brand new Buick with a driver that drove us all over and we’d all put money in the kitty every morning and Muggs would be the banker and we traveled from Lake Chapala to Morelia.”

Katie Goodridge Ingram (who first brought Millard Sheets’ link to Lake Chapala to my attention) remembered Sheets bringing an artist group to paint in Ajijic on at least one occasion. This was probably in 1979. An exhibition billed as the “premiere exhibition of Millard Sheets’ Mexican Painting Workshop” opened in the Bright Shawl Gallery in San Antonio (Texas) in September 1979. The workshop was sponsored by Thurman and Warren Hewitt of San Diego:

It attracted some of the nation’s leading artists—about 30 in all—to Ajijic on Lake Chapala in March. The sweeping vistas of this picturesque spot in Mexico offered magnificent colors and inspiration, along with more mundane pleasures such as fishing, seine netting, flower and bird watching. The results of this workshop (Mr Sheets selected the best paintings from each student’s output for the show) are what the Bright Shawl is offering in its exhibit.”

San Antonio was only the first stop for the show, which was then scheduled to be visit San Francisco, San Diego, Phoenix, and Juneau (Alaska).

Note: This remains a work in progress. If you can offer any additional information about Millard Sheets’ visits to Lake Chapala, please get in touch!

Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission. Learn more.

Several chapters of Foreign Footprints in Ajijic: Decades of Change in a Mexican Village offer more details about the history of the artistic community in Ajijic.

Note: This post was last updated in November 2025.

Source

  • Mary MacNaughton. 2002. Interview of Sam Maloof conducted January 2002 by Mary MacNaughton, for the Archives of American Art, in Maloof’s home/studio in Alta Loma, California.
  • Glenn Tucker. 1979. “Art Scene.” San Antonio Light, 26 Aug 1979, 204.

Comments, corrections or additional material welcome, whether via comments feature or email.

Architect Arne Dehli and the Hotel Plaza, Chapala

 1920s and earlier  No Responses »
May 042023
 

This beautiful architectural sketch for a major railroad and hotel complex in Chapala offers intriguing insights into plans at the start of the twentieth century to transform Chapala into an international tourist destination.

The drawing is dated 1912. This is despite the fact that the company that eventually built the La Capilla-Chapala railroad was not formed until five years later. Construction of the railroad and station began in 1917, and was completed by 1920; the inaugural passenger service was on 8 April 1920.

Arne Dehli. 1912. Sketch of Hotel Plaza, Chapala

Arne Dehli. 1912. Sketch of Hotel Plaza, Chapala.

The person who commissioned the drawing, and was the main promoter of the company that built the railroad, was Norwegian-born entrepreneur Christian Schejtnan. The author of the sketch was Norwegian-American architect Arne Dehli (1857-1942). Dehli, born in Ringsaker, Norway, trained in Germany before moving to New York to design churches, the nurses’ home for the Norwegian Hospital, various business structures, some private residences, and the zoological building in Prospect Park, Brooklyn. The Norwegian link presumably explains why Schejtnan wanted Dehli to be involved in the project.

We can also safely assume that Schejtnan made good use of the drawing in his pitches to potential Norwegian investors. His sales pitches extolled the virtues of the railroad and how building a first class hotel would turn Chapala into Mexico’s largest tourist and health resort. Additional revenues would come from building private villas, a combined yacht and automotive club, and a casino. In short, Schejtnan’s master plan would create “an El Dorado for the country’s richest, a sought-after place for the country’s jeunesse dorée.” (Brøgger) Norwegians were sufficiently entranced with Schjetnan’s dreams for this remote lake on the other side of the world that they happily parted with tens of thousands of dollars. Sadly, most investors reportedly lost their shirts long before the railroad ever came into being.

The master plan was far too ambitious to achieve all at once, and, in any case, Schejtnan was always short of investors and working capital. For the railroad line itself- his top priority- Schejtnan imported a young Norwegian railroad engineer, Birger Winsnes, to oversee the work of laying the track; Winsnes worked in partnership with Guadalajara engineer Juan José Barragán, the brother of famed modernist architect Luis Barragán.

It is possible that Schejtnan always hoped to have Dehli design the railroad station, his second priority. But, with funds tight, he finally settled on asking a near neighbor in Chapala—engineer Guillermo de Alba—to draw up the plans for the station.

Dehli remained in the picture, though. And four months after the railroad opened, Guadalajara press reported that he had been chosen by Schejtnan to design the luxury Hotel Plaza, intended to be the centerpiece of an extensive residential development.

Sadly, Schejnan’s and Dehli’s plans for the Hotel Plaza never progressed beyond the drawing board. A copy of Dehli’s plan is in Mexico’s National Water History Archive (Archivo Histórico del Agua) in Mexico City.

Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission. Learn more.

For more about Christian Schetjnan, Guillermo de Alba, and the short-lived glory of the Chapala Railroad Station, see If Walls Could Talk: Chapala’s Historic Buildings and Their Former Occupants (available in Spanish as Si las paredes hablaran: Edificios históricos de Chapala y sus antiguos ocupantes).

Sources

  • Kenneth Bjork. 1947. Saga in Steel and Concrete: Norwegian Engineers in America. Norwegian-American Historical Association.
  • Magnus Bjørndal. 1931. “Arne Dehli,” in Norwegian-American Technical Journal, vol. 4, no. 1, p. 12 (April, 1931).
  • El Informador: 11 August 1920.
  • Brøgger, Kr. Fr. 1932. Gullfeber ‑ en advokats optegnelser fra siste jobbetid. (Gold Fever – A Lawyer’s Records from the last job.). Forlagt av H. Aschehoug & Co (W. Nygaard), 63-64. [translation by author]
  • Museo CJV (Claudio Jiménez Vizcarra). “Vista del lago. Hotel Plaza y Estación del Ferro Carril en Chapala Jalisco.”

Comments, corrections or additional material related to any of the writers and artists featured in our series of mini-bios are welcomed. Please use the comments feature at the bottom of individual posts, or email us.

The Luis Barragan-Witter Bynner house in Chapala

 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, 1960s  5 Responses »
Dec 142017
 

The American poet Witter Bynner, who first visited Chapala in the company of D.H. Lawrence in 1923, purchased a house in the town in 1940. The original address of the house, close to the plaza on the main street down to the pier, was 411 Galeana, but the current name of the street is Francisco I. Madero.

Bynner’s home had previously belonged to the famed Mexican architect Luis Barragán (1902-1988). It had apparently belonged to the Barragán family since the end of the 19th century and had been transformed – by Luis Barragán himself, with the assistance of Juan Palomar y Arias – in 1931-32. (We will consider Barragán’s connections to Lake Chapala in a future post).

The Bynner House, Chapala, 2016. Photo: Tony Burton.

The Witter Bynner House, Chapala, 2016. Photo: Tony Burton.

Bynner and his companion Robert “Bob” Hunt became regular visitors to Chapala for several decades. Their mutual friend, artist John Liggett Meigs, is quoted as saying that, “Bynner’s house was on the town’s plaza, a short distance from the lake. Hunt restored the home and, in 1943, added an extensive rooftop terrace, which had clear views of Lake Chapala and nearby mountains. It became Bynner and Hunt’s winter home.” (Mark S. Fuller, Never a Dull Moment: The Life of John Liggett Meigs, 2015). It is worth noting that, while the house was on the plaza when Bynner bought it, the center was remodeled (and the plaza moved) in the 1950s (see comment by Juan Palomar below) so that the house is now a short distance south of the plaza, though it is very close. In addition, as Palmora points out, the rooftop terrace was the work of Barragán and already existed when Bynner bought the house, though it was subsequently modified.

According to some sources, Bynner lent his home in Chapala to the then almost-unknown playwright Tennessee Williams in the summer of 1945. During his time at Lake Chapala, Williams wrote the first draft of A Street Car Named Desire.

At some point after Hunt’s death in 1964 and Bynner’s serious stroke in 1965, or upon Bynner’s death in 1968, the house in Chapala (and its contents) was purchased, jointly, by Meigs and another well-known artist Peter Hurd.

Meigs was particularly taken with the fact that the house had once belonged to Barragán, whose architectural work had been an inspiration for his own architectural designs. Mark Fuller writes that,

“the house had two floors, the rooftop terrace that Hunt had added, and a “tower” overlooking Lake Chapala. The other buildings on the block included a “wonderful cantina“, which became a supermarket; another two-story house next door, with a high wall between that house and Bynner’s courtyard; and a two-story hotel on the corner. However, after John [Meigs] and Hurd bought Bynner’s house, they discovered that the owners of the hotel had sold the airspace over the hotel, and, one time, when John arrived, he discovered a twenty foot by forty foot “Presidente Brandy” [sic] advertisement sign on top of the hotel, blocking his view of the lake. John said that that was when he and Hurd decided to sell the place. While he had use of it, though, he very much enjoyed it.”

In 1968, Hurd rented the house out to another artist Everett Gee Jackson. By a strange coincidence, Jackson had rented D.H. Lawrence‘s former residence in Chapala way back in 1923, immediately after the great English author left the town!

For a time, the Barragán-Bynner-Hurt/Meigs house was temporarily converted into warehouse space for a local supermarket, but is now once again a private residence.

Sources:

Sombrero Books welcomes comments, corrections or additional material related to any of the writers and artists featured in our series of mini-bios. Please use the comments feature at the bottom of individual posts, or email us.

Modernist architect Pedro Castellanos Lambley designed the Villa Ferrara in Chapala

 1930s  6 Responses »
Oct 302017
 

Pedro Castellanos Lambley is one of several distinguished Mexican architects who designed and built the fine old homes in Chapala that now give the town its architecturally-eclectic appeal.

Castellanos was the architect of Villa Ferrara, at Hidalgo 240, in Chapala. This elegant dwelling was photographed in the mid-1930s by American photographer-architect Esther Baum Born during her travels across Mexico documenting the rise of Mexican modernist architecture.

Castellanos was born in Guadalajara on 26 January 1902 into a high society family that excelled in literature and politics. His grandmother was the poet Esther Tapia de Castellanos. His father was Luis Castellanos Tapia who was governor of the state of Jalisco, 1919-1920, and his mother was Carolina Lambley Magaña.

The young Castellanos completed his basic education in the U.K. and at a military school in the U.S. before returning to Guadalajara to enter the city’s Escuela Libre de Ingenieros, then run by Ambrosio Ulloa. Fellow students in the engineering school included several other noteworthy Guadalajara architects including the internationally renowned Luis Barragán Morfín.

By the time Castellanos graduated in 1924, Barragán was working on projects with his brother, Juan José Barragán, who was a prominent builder. When Luis Barragán left the partnership to start his own architectural practice, Castellanos succeeded him as Juan José Barragán’s lead designer.

Several years later, in about 1931, Castellanos and engineer Enrique Martinez Negrete started their own practice – Castellanos and Negrete – which quickly gained an enviable reputation for appealing and successful designs representative of early Modernism.

Villa Ferrara, Chapala. ca 1950. Architect: Pedro Castellanos Lambley. Postcard: González.

Villa Ferrara, Chapala. ca 1950. Architect: Pedro Castellanos Lambley. Postcard: J. González.

Among Castellanos’ most famous designs from this time are Villa Ferrara in Chapala and several stately family homes in Guadalajara, as well as the city’s old San Juan de Dios market (which was replaced in the 1950s).

Between 1935 and 1940, Castellanos partnered with Juan Palomar y Arias to propose an ambitious plan they referred to as “El Plano Loco” (“The Mad Plan”) for a utopian, visionary and futuristic Guadalajara. It called for the creation of a 120-meter-wide ring of circulation around the city. Districts would be divided by broad boulevards and linear parks and walkways would link to a massive green space in the center to produce a genuinely ecological city. On the city’s northern edge, they proposed the creation of a Parque de la Barranca.

Castellanos had become one of Guadalajara’s most successful and highly respected architects when he switched tracks in 1938 and entered the Franciscan order in Aguascalientes, after which he focused exclusively on designing ecclesiastical buildings. Castellanos was on the diocesan Art Commission from 1940 and designed the chapel at Ciudad Granja, the Templo de Nuestra Señora del Sagrado Rosario in Guadalajara and several other temples in small towns. He also designed the tower and entrance to the church of San Miguel Arcángel in La Manzanilla de la Paz south of Lake Chapala.

Pedro Castellanos Lambley died in his native Guadalajara on 25 September 1961.

Sources:

Sombrero Books welcomes comments, corrections or additional material related to any of the writers and artists featured in our series of mini-bios. Please use the comments feature at the bottom of individual posts, or email us.

Architect George Heneghan lived in Ajijic from 1971 to 1975

 1970s  No Responses »
Oct 162017
 

Architect George Heneghan lived in Ajijic with his wife, Molly, and their two young sons – Eric and Adam – from 1971 to 1975.

George Edward Heneghan Jr. was born in St. Louis, Missouri, on 30 April 1934 and died on 6 August 1999. He graduated from St. Louis University High School, studied at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris and received his B. Arch from Washington University in St. Louis in 1962. Heneghan was an active member of several athletics and sports-related clubs.

In the 1960s he worked alongside his childhood friend (and later partner) Daniel Gale in Fritz Benedict’s practice. Benedict had been a gardener at Frank Lloyd Wright’s estates – Taliesin East and Taliesen West – prior to training as an architect. The two young men were considered “Benedict’s protégés”. Heneghen was greatly influenced by Frank Lloyd Wright (as was another long-time Lake Chapala resident, Russell Seely Bayly). As a result, Heneghan’s architectural style is best described (to borrow a phrase from his son, Eric) as Wrightian/Organic.

When George Heneghan married Molly Duane at St. Mary’s Church in Aspen, Colorado, on 12 June 1965, Dan Gale was his best man. The newlyweds spent their honeymoon in Mexico and then returned to live in Aspen.

In 1966 Heneghan and Gale joined forces in an architectural partnership, which lasted until 1969. During that time they designed many of the larger buildings in Aspen, including the Hannah Dustin commercial building (300 S. Spring), the Aspen Interfaith Chapel of the Prince of Peace on Meadowood Drive, and the Cottonwoods Condominium. They also designed homes for the Guggenheim, Horowitz and many other families. The partnership ended when Gale left Aspen for California in 1969.

George Heneghan, Ajijic, ca 1972. Photo by Beverly Johnson. (Reproduced by kind permission of Tamara Janúz).

George Heneghan, Ajijic, ca 1972. Photo by Beverly Johnson. (Reproduced by kind permission of Tamara Janúz).

The Heneghans first visited Ajijic in 1970 to spend Christmas with Molly’s parents who usually spent the winter there. They liked what they saw and rented a house in Rancho del Oro for several months. George commuted back and forth to Aspen until mid-1971 when, with the assistance of Gerda and Jim Kelly, they bought property on Calle Zaragoza to remodel as their family home. (In May of 1971, according to the Guadalajara Reporter, George Heneghan is planning to build his retirement home in Ajijic.) According to local legend, because the architect was not a very tall man, the home, now known as Casa Flores, was designed with relatively low ceiling heights.

Danza del Sol hotel, Ajijic. Credit: TripAdvisor.

Danza del Sol hotel, Ajijic. Credit: TripAdvisor.

The architecture of the family home was admired to such an extent that the architect retained by the wealthy and influential Leaño family to build the Danza del Sol hotel in Ajijic asked George Heneghan to collaborate on the design. The hotel, about ten blocks west of the village plaza, has remained a landmark ever since. The international promotion of the new hotel, shortly after it was completed, featured photographs taken by village photographer Beverly Johnson. Local sales for Danza del Sol were handled by realtor Mary Bishop, wife of Dick Bishop.

[Dick Bishop was one of Ajijic’s more colorful characters in the 1960s and 1970s, forever associated with riding his large Arabian horse through the village. Loy Strother, as a child, was the jockey on Bishop’s horse in a race along the dirt road between San Antonio Tlayacapan and Ajijic. He recalls that Bishop “bought a saddle for that horse that had a bar in it. Yep, the pommel of that saddle was raised on a square structure (covered in carved leather as part of the saddle) that opened and held glasses, small bottles of booze and even a little ice bucket… and a tiny martini shaker.” Those were the days!]

While living in Ajijic, Molly Heneghan put her graphical design talents to work. She drew and published the first edition of “Sunny Ajijic”, an informative poster-map of Ajijic, in about 1973.

The couple was active in local theater and in November 1973 acted together in a show at the Little Lakeside Theater.

The family took some exciting vacations during their time in Mexico. For example, in 1973, the local press reported that Molly Heneghan had left for Disneyland with both sons, and that George would soon join them for “a chartered sail in the Atlantic.”

The Heneghans did not occupy their “retirement” home on Calle Zaragoza in Ajijic for very long. By 1975, their former home, described for a House and Garden Tour as “an architect’s fantasy dream home” had become a  vacation home jointly owned by Dr. Bob Peyton, chief surgeon of Queen’s Hospital in Honolulu, Dr. Harry Huffaker, “the swimming dentist” who made many spectacular long distance swims, and Tom Held, founder of Aloha Hawaii Travel.

When they returned north in 1975, the Heneghans spent a few months in New Mexico before relocating to Hawaii, where Heneghan established an award-winning architectural practice. He specialized in designing private residences, but his commercial work included building his own offices, designed to obviate the need for air conditioning, relying instead purely on air movements resulting from the natural diurnal breezes.

Heneghan was not only an architect on Hawaii but “an accomplished athlete, teacher and coach” who coached cross-country and track at Parker School from 1992-1998. After he died in Hawaii in 1999, a fun run was established in his memory in Kamuela, Hawaii.

Acknowledgments

  • My sincere thanks to Molly Leland for sharing memories of her time with her family in Mexico. I am also grateful to Tamara Janúz for permission to reproduce the photograph taken by her mother, Beverly Johnson.

Sources:

  • AspenModern website. George Edward Heneghan, Jr. (1934-1999).
  • Guadalajara Reporter: 8 May 1971; 22 Sep 1973; 29 Nov 1975.
  • St. Louis Post-Dispatch (St. Louis, Missouri): 13 June 1965, page 113.
  • Monica Geran. 1986. “In Hawaii: the design offices for and by George Heneghan Architects in Kailu-Kona”, in Interior Design, 1 August 1986.

Sombrero Books welcomes comments, corrections or additional material related to any of the writers and artists featured in our series of mini-bios. Please email us or use the comments feature at the bottom of individual posts.

Photographer-architect Esther Born (1902-1987) visited Chapala in the mid-1930s

 1930s  No Responses »
Oct 092017
 

The American photographer-architect Esther Baum Born is known to have visited Chapala in the mid-1930s in order to photograph the modernist architecture of Villa Ferrara.

Esther Baum was born in Palo Alto, California, in 1902. She attended the Oakland Technical High School before entering the University of California, Berkeley, in 1920 to study architecture under John Galen Howard. After graduating in 1924, she began graduate studies, spent a year in Europe studying languages and art history, and then (in 1926) married fellow architect Ernest Born. The couple visited Europe before settling in New York City.

Portrait of Esther Born

Portrait of Esther Born

During the Great Depression, Esther Born studied photography. She took an intensive course in architectural photography with photographer Ben Rabinovitch in 1933 and later showed her work in a group exhibition and solo shows at the Rabinovitch Gallery.

While living in New York, Born and her husband had become friends of Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo. This friendship piqued their curiosity about Mexican art and architecture and Esther Born traveled to Mexico for about ten months in 1935-1936, primarily in order to compile a portfolio of photographs related to Mexico’s modernist architecture. Rivera and Kahlo accompanied her on many of her visits to see the latest examples of buildings designed by Mexico’s cutting-edge architects: Juan O’Gorman, Luis Barragán Morfín, José Villagrán García and others.

Photo by Esther Born.

The Tuberculosis Sanatorium, Huipulco, Mexico City. Architect: José Villagrán García. Photograph ca 1935 by Esther Born.

Born’s archives related to this trip now reside in the Center for Creative Photography at The University of Arizona. They include a photograph entitled “Castellanos and Negreste–House at Lake Chapala”. This picture shows the Villa Ferrara at Hidalgo 240 in Chapala. The villa’s architect was Pedro Castellanos Lambley (1901-1961), whose career and links to Lake Chapala we will consider in a future post. Castellanos formed an architectural partnership in the early 1930s with Enrique Martinez Negrete. Born’s portfolio from Mexico includes two photographs of Enrique’s brothers—Luis and Francisco Martinez Negrete—and the ‘Negreste’ in the title of the Chapala photo in her archives is clearly a typo for Negrete.

Following the trip, and now living in San Francisco, Born (with help from her husband and the Mexican art critic Justino Fernández) wrote The New Architecture in Mexico. This was initially published in Architectural Record in April 1937 before being expanded and turned into a book of the same name. This book is now a highly-prized collectible volume about Mexico’s modernist art and architecture. It helped draw global attention to developments in Mexican design and architecture.

Diego Rivera's studio. Architect: Juan O'Gorman. Photo by Esther Born.

Diego Rivera’s studio, ca 1935. Architect: Juan O’Gorman. Photo by Esther Born.

In the late 1930s and early 1940s, Born documented the Golden Gate International Exposition (1939-1940), which was held on Treasure Island near San Francisco, and photographed homes designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and other famous architects.

Note that other artists associated with both the Golden Gate International Exposition (1939-1940) and Lake Chapala include Orville Goldner (of “King Kong” fame); John Langley Howard; painter and muralist Louis Ernest Lenshaw (1892-1988); abstract painter Robert Pearson McChesney (1913-2008); painter and muralist Ann Sonia Medalie (1896-1991); etcher Max Pollak (1886-1970); and print maker Charles Frederick Surendorf (1906-1979).

During the second world war, Esther Born worked for the San Francisco Housing Authority on the acquisition of properties for housing war industry workers. She continued to have photographs published in several architectural journals throughout her career.

In 1945, immediately after the war, Ernest Born founded his own architecture practice in San Francisco. Esther helped run this firm for almost thirty years until her health began to deteriorate in 1971. Among the firm’s major projects were a plan for Fisherman’s Wharf, housing in North Beach, signage for the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) system and the couple’s own oceanfront house at 2020 Great Highway.

In the mid-1980s, they moved to San Diego to live closer to their daughter. Esther Baum Born died in that city in 1987.

Sources:

  • Esther Born and Justino Fernandez. 1937. “The New Architecture in Mexico,” in Architectural Record, April 1937, V. 81, pp. 1–86.
  • Esther Born and Justino Fernandez. 1937. The New Architecture in Mexico. New York: W. Morrow and Co.
  • Center for Creative Photography, The University of Arizona, Tucson. Finding aid for the Esther Born collection, 1935-1937.
  • Nicholas Olsberg. 2015. Architects and artists: the work of Ernest and Esther Born. San Francisco: Book Club of California.
  • Kathryn E. O’Rourke. 2012. “Guardians of Their Own Health: Tuberculosis, Rationalism, and Reform in Modern Mexico”, in Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Vol. 71 No. 1, March 2012; (pp. 60-77)

Sombrero Books welcomes comments, corrections or additional material related to any of the writers and artists featured in our series of mini-bios. Please use the comments feature at the bottom of individual posts, or email us.

Designer, craftsman and bon viveur Russell Seeley Bayly (1919-2013)

 1970s, 1980s, 1990s onwards  No Responses »
Sep 252017
 

Designer, craftsman and bon viveur Russell Seeley Bayly (1919-2013) lived in Jocotepec, at the western end of Lake Chapala, for close to forty years. He became a good personal friend, though I now regret not having recorded him as he reminisced about his life, loves and adventures.

Bayly was born in Los Angeles, Calfornia on 5 May 1919. He grew up in a privileged family, wealthy enough to have its own stables and horse trainer in addition to a butler, cook, housekeeper, maids, gardeners and a seamstress. Bayly’s father, Roy D. Bayly, was a successful financier and stock broker who had commissioned noted California architect Reginald Davis Johnson to build a Virginia-style home on nine acres of property in Flintridge, near Pasadena. Bayly Sr. was a co-founder of the Flintridge Riding Club and his children, including Russell, were all accomplished riders, winning ribbons and trophies for riding and jumping.

“Russ” Bayly was in the class of ’34 at Polytechnic School before attending Midland School. He graduated from this small boarding school near Los Olivos in 1938. Among his life-long friends was the artist-photographer John Frost, who also attended Midland. Not altogether coincidentally, Frost and his wife – the author Joan Van Every Frost – moved to Jocotepec shortly before Bayly did the same.

Bayly enlisted in the U.S. military on 7 January 1942, after two years of college at the University of Virginia, and giving his previous occupation as “fisherman, oysterman.” He served in the U.S. cavalry during the second world war but his wartime experiences left him with severe post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Russell Bayly relaxing at home with his neighbor Tad Davidson (Lady Mary Fleming), August 2008. Photo by Tony Burton.

Russell Bayly, aged 89, relaxing at home with his neighbor Tad Davidson (Lady Mary Fleming), August 2008. Photo by Tony Burton.

After the war, Bayly attended the highly regarded Chouinard Art Institute (Chouinard School of Art and Design) in Los Angeles. He married Joan Virginia Young  in 1947, and the couple had four children: Russell Warder (1948-2016), David Hostetter (1951) Brooks (1952), and daughter Neville (1954).

In the 1950s, while working as a painting contractor, Bayly found recognition as a designer, primarily of furniture. For example, his work was highlighted in a national exhibition of Californian design first held at the Pasadena Art Museum from 12 January to 23 February 1958. Over the years, Bayly filed for several patents relating to original furniture designs. These almost certainly included the “prototype chair in steel, teak and fabric”, shown in a photograph that appeared in California Design in 1965. A matching ottoman was also available.

In the mid-1960s, the well-known industrial designer Victor J. Papanek, who had been at design school with Bayly, offered him a position as associate professor of design at Purdue University. Bayly taught there for four years, ending in 1971.

Bayly and his wife, Bee, moved to Jocotepec in late 1971, and rented a house there while beginning construction of their own home. While the Guadalajara Reporter for 20 July 1974 reports that Russell and his wife Bee had just entertained friends to a farewell party, prior to Russell “returning to his college teaching position in California”, Russell was no longer teaching by that time, though he did return to Los Alamos, California, and subsequently Santa Barbara, to make a living. Bayly regularly returned to Jocotepec prior to becoming a full-time resident of the town in the 1980s.

During his years in Jocotepec, he designed and oversaw the construction of several homes in the town, including the modernist, open-plan, steel-beamed hexagonal building that was his home for the last thirty years of his life. Built on a small corner lot overlooking the town and lake, the design was based on a series of hexagons with full-height living areas, floor-to-ceiling glass windows onto an immaculate garden, and a mezzanine that afforded a panoramic view across the lake. It also had a fully-equipped workshop for working metal and wood. Bayly was a skilled craftsman and took particularly delight in crafting the most exquisite furniture and small boxes, often utilizing rare scraps of exotic woods that he had found abandoned in some lumber yard.

Bayly. Photo taken in Jocotepec, August 2007 by Tony Burton.

Chairs and table designed by Russell Bayly. Photo taken in Jocotepec, August 2007 by Tony Burton.

Bayly’s former home, at Hidalgo Nte. #150, was his crowning achievement in terms of architecture and design. He personally designed and built all the bespoke furniture and fittings throughout the home, achieving a simple elegance that would have been worthy of inclusion in Architectural Digest.

Bayly imported a vintage VW “Combi” van from California, converted it into a no-frills camper, and used it to travel all over Mexico. Every few years he would take a lengthy overseas trip: to Europe, Africa or Asia.

In later life, Bayly helped me run several lengthy ecotourist trips through western Mexico, trips that inevitably involved lots of dirt road driving (which he loved). He always kept a camping chair, bottle of white wine (suitably cooled) and a couple of glasses in his van. One of my abiding memories from the many trips we did together is of him carrying these items to the top of a little-known pyramid in Michoacán so that he could sit, relax and sip his wine while enjoying the scenery and brilliant sunset.

Bayly had worked in so many different jobs at some point in his lifetime (lumberjack, educator, tuna fisherman, steel mill) that he was able to entertain guests at dinner parties with a seamless, and seemingly endless, stream of stories, all told with good humor and great insight. Bayly was a conversationalist, raconteur and bon viveur second to none.

Even in his final years, as his daily siestas became longer, Bayly remained willing to ferry groups of paragliders into the hills near Jocotepec as they sought the best launch spots, secure in the knowledge that he would manage to find them again wherever they landed and drive them safely back to civilization.

Having done what he could to make the world a better place, Bayly died on 23 February 2013.

Acknowledgment

  • My sincere thanks to Brooks Bayly for kindly sharing memories and details of his father’s life.

Sources:

  • California Design 9 (1965)
  • Catalog of national exhibition first held at the Pasadena Art Museum, Pasadena, Calif., January 12-February 23, 1958. (Designers include: Russell S. Bayly Associates, Martin Borenstein, Robert E. Brown, Garry M. Carthew, Danny Ho Fong, William A. Kalpe, and Roger Kennedy.)
  • Guadalajara Reporter, 20 July 1974.
  • OakTree Times (magazine of the Polytechnic School Community), Spring/Summer 2014.

Sombrero Books welcomes comments, corrections or additional material related to any of the writers and artists featured in our series of mini-bios. Please use the comments feature at the bottom of individual posts, or email us.

Architect Jean Taylor Strange lived more than forty years in Chapala

 1960s, 1970s  4 Responses »
Jul 242017
 

Architect Jean Taylor Strange moved to Chapala with her husband William Strange in January 1965 (having bought a house in Chapala Haciendas in December 1964) and resided there for more than forty years.

Jean Taylor Strange. Photo from Grierson (2008)

Jean Taylor Strange. Photo from Grierson (2008)

Besides the fact that she worked with her husband on researching his radio documentaries about Mexico for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), Jean Strange has a significant additional claim to fame since she was one of the first women in Canada to graduate with a degree in architecture. [Alice Charlotte Malhiot (1889-1968), who graduated in 1914, is now recognized as Canada’s first woman architect; only a handful of other Canadian women graduated as architects prior to the second world war.]

A short profile of Jean Strange, who graduated from the School of Architecture at the University of Toronto in 1948, is included in Joan Grierson’s For the Record: The First Women in Canadian Architecture. The profile includes some photographs of her work and quotes Jean Strange as saying that, “My architectural training has enriched my life immeasurably. I cannot claim that any of these years had been dull.”

Jean, born in Thorne, Yorkshire, on 17 September 1919, was educated in the U.K. and Switzerland and then enrolled in the architectural course at Brighton Art School and Technical College in 1937. Two years later, part way through her studies there, she visited Canada on what was meant to be a six week trip as a student member of the Overseas Education League. The second world war broke out while she was in Canada, preventing her from returning home. She enrolled at the University of Toronto and was placed in the second year of the program of the class of 1943.

In 1943, she had completed all formal studies but still lacked the one year of experience required to be awarded her degree.

Since the war was still ongoing, she joined the Women’s Royal Canadian Naval Service, working in operations and base planning. This included a spell as assistant to Captain William Strange in the Directorate of Naval Information.

Discharged from the Naval Service after the war, she worked for the Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) in Ontario under architect Sam Gitterman, gaining the year’s experience required to complete her B. Arch degree in 1948. The following year she transferred within the CMHC to the publications section under Humphrey Carter.

Jean Taylor Strange with Ted Raines, Design Center, Ottawa, 1954. Photo from Grierson (2008)

Jean Taylor Strange with Ted Raines, Design Center, Ottawa, 1954. Photo from Grierson (2008)

Carver, in his memoir, Compassionate Landscape, writes that “I was also very lucky that through this whole period Jean Strange worked for me, with her meticulous sweet patience for the small-scale problems of housing design and the page-by-page layout of the publications that issued from our office. I had first known Jean as an English school-girl and wartime-evacuee who came to the Toronto School of Architecture in 1939. Later, she joined the Navy, married Captain William Strange, historian and broadcaster, and now they live in Mexico.”

Jean Taylor married Captain William Strange in 1950. She continued to work for the CMHC until 1959 when her husband was working in Jamaica, training staff for the Jamaica Broadcasting Corporation. In Jamaica Jean was a volunteer researcher and her husband’s assistant.

In 1962, the Stranges took two trips to the Yucatán Peninsula collecting information about the Maya for a CBC special. Shortly afterwards they decided to relocate to Mexico and bought a home in Chapala Haciendas.

Jean Strange assisted her husband with the research and writing of further documentaries about Mexico for the CBC, including a program on Cortés and the conquest of Mexico, entitled “The Bold Ones” and one about Emperor Maximilian and his wife Carlota.

Jean Strange continued to live in Chapala after the death of her husband in 1983. Jean Strange later moved to La Floresta in Ajijic where she died in about 2015.

Sources:

  • Humphrey Carver. 1975. Compassionate Landscape. University of Toronto Press.
  • Joan Grierson. 2008. For the Record: The First Women in Canadian Architecture. Toronto: Dundurn.
  • Guadalajara Reporter 30 April 1964, 2; 18 Nov 1965, 6.
  • Peter C. Newman. 2005. Here Be Dragons: Telling Tales Of People, Passion and Power. McClelland & Stewart.

Sombrero Books welcomes comments, corrections or additional material related to any of the writers and artists featured in our series of mini-bios. Please use the comments feature at the bottom of individual posts, or email us.

Eugene and Marjorie Nowlen: artistic couple with a long connection to Lake Chapala

 1960s, 1970s  4 Responses »
Jan 262017
 

Eugene and Marjorie Nowlen were an artistic couple who had a long connection to Mexico. The certainly visited Mexico prior to 1938, and first visited Ajijic on Lake Chapala in 1950. They became regular visitors to Lake Chapala from then until the 1970s. The work of both artists was included in A Cookbook with Color Reproductions by Artists from the Galería (1972).

The couple grew up in the small city of Benton Harbor in Michigan, which has a street named after Eugene Nowlen’s paternal grandfather, A. R. Nowlen.

Eugene Pratt Nowlen (aka Gene Nowlen) was born on 4 November 1899 and became an architect, completing his education at the school of architecture of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Lillian Marjorie Poundstone, who usually went by her middle name, was born on 31 March 1901. An accomplished pianist, she studied at the University of Michigan (class of 1924) and became a music and dance teacher. While still in high school she won second place in a state local history competition. Her essay, along with other winning essays, was published in 1917 in “Prize essays written by pupils of Michigan schools in the local history contest for 1916-17”.

Eugen Nowlen. Festival. ca 1972.

Eugene Nowlen. Festival. ca 1972. (A Cookbook with Color Reproductions by Artists from the Galería)

Marjorie’s musical accomplishments also started at an early age. She receives Regular mentions in the local press as a pianist. In November 1925, for instance, a short piece in Central Normal Life said that she played the “Blue Danube” waltz by Strauss and “To a Toy Soldier” by Clarence Warner with “great technical skill and fine interpretative ability.” It is clear from these and other references that both Marjorie and Eugene were in the social elite of Benton Harbor.

On 11 February 1928 they were united in marriage, a marriage that was to last until Gene’s death in 1977.

In their first years of marriage, Eugene Nolen practiced as an architect in his native city (remodeling the building occupied by the Peoples Savings Association and designing new homes), while Marjorie gave piano and dance lessons at their home at #758, Pearl Street.

The couple had two children: Barbara Jean (possibly Barbara Gene) and Richard, usually referred to in press reports as “Dick”. The children performed Mexican dances at local shows, and in more than one report, it was stated that “their parents have visited [Mexico] and bought authentic costumes”. At age 7, another report describes “Barbara Gene Nowlen taking several bows after her dance in a gorgeous costume brought back from Mexico by her parents”. The family’s love for Mexico was evident. For instance, following another concert, Marjorie Nowlen was going to show “Mexican motion pictures”.

Eugene Nowlen. Untitled watercolor. Date unknown

Eugene Nowlen. Untitled watercolor. Date unknown.

In 1943 the family left Benton Harbor and relocated to California, to Pasadena and Laguna Beach, where Eugene worked in real estate. The circumstances that led them to visit Ajijic in 1950 are unclear but, by the early 1950s, Eugene had retired in order to paint full-time. The couple promptly set off on an 18-month-long trip around the world, allowing plenty of painting time along the way.

On their return, Eugene Nowlen’s watercolors were shown at the Laguna Beach Art Gallery, in an exhibit, held in 1955, which also featured oils by Carl Schmidt of San Bernardino. The press report for this event says that Nowlen had won an award at the annual Madonna festival in Los Angeles for a watercolor entitled “Mexican Mother.” According to the Laguna Beach Art Association, Nowlen had several solo exhibits during his artistic career.

As an artist, Gene Nowlen developed his techniques by studying with several well-known artists, including Sueo Serisawa, Paul Darrow, Hans Burkhardt, and Leonard Edmondson.

In 1960, Nowlen’s “Market Day” was exhibited at a showing at a private home in Los Angeles, alongside works by many other artists, including one who also had close ties to Lake Chapala. One of the other paintings in the show as Priscilla Frazer‘s “Mosaic Gate.” Frazer had a home in Chapala Haciendas for many years.

The Nowlens were active in the Laguna Beach Art Association through the 1960s. For instance, in 1968, they co-organized a December art bazaar. According to a Los Angeles Times article in 1970, during Marjorie Nowlen’s chairmanship of the Exhibitions Committee at the Laguna Art Museum, she brought in experienced judges and the membership more than doubled from 300 to 640. The article describes her as “a soft spoken leader” and says that this “gracious, girlish grandmother with a gentle sense of humor” is “a determined doer.”

Marjorie Nowlen. Happy Moments. ca 1972.

Marjorie Nowlen. Happy Moments. ca 1972. (A Cookbook with Color Reproductions by Artists from the Galería)

Marjorie Nowlen exhibited at the Many Media Mini Show, Redlands Art Association, in 1970.

A Cookbook with Color Reproductions by Artists from the Galería (1972) included works by both Eugene and Marjorie Nowlen. (Other artists represented in this small volume include Luis Avalos, Antonio Cárdenas, Marian Carpenter, Jerry K. Carr, Tom Faloon, Priscilla Frazer, John Frost, Arthur L. Ganung, Virginia Ganung, Lona Isoard, Antonio López Vega, Luz Luna, Robert Neathery, José Olmedo, Hudson M. Rose, Mary Rose, Eleanor Smart and Jack Williams.)

Marjorie Nowlen also showed a work which received an honorable mention, in La Mirada’s Fiesta de Artes in Long Beach, California, in May 1974.

Gene Nowlen died on 27 September 1977 at the age of 77; Marjorie Nowlen passed away on 1 April 1998, at the age of 97.

Note:

While the 1940 US Census suggests that the Nowlens’ son, Richard, was born in about 1932, elsewhere it seems that he was actually born in 1929 and is the same Richard Nowlen who was murdered along with a female friend in the Mojave Desert, California in 1959, while on the run from Chino men’s prison.

Sources:

  • Central Normal Life, 25 November 1925, p1.
  • A Cookbook with Color Reproductions by Artists from the Galería. 1972. (Ajijic, Mexico: La Galería del Lago de Chapala).
  • Guadalajara Reporter, 30 Jan 1964, 7.
  • Independent Press-Telegram, Long Beach, California: 29 May 1955, p 51; 10 April 1960, p 57; 1 December 1968, p 149; 12 May 1974, p60.
  • Independent, Long Beach, California, 11 September 1959, p5.
  • Lael Morgan. 1970. “Art Exhibition Chairman Brings Changes to Laguna”, in Los Angeles Times (16 October 1970), E2, p1.
  • Mirror News, Los Angeles, Monday, September 14, 1959 page 12.
  • The News-Palladium, Benton Harbor, Michigan: 2 August 1917 p 2; 21 December 1923, p17; 28 July 1925, p4; 1 January 1938, p41; 22 June 1938, p 3; 11 May 1939, p3; 13 May 1939, p3; 23 June 1939, p 4; 16 March 1940, p4; 30 April 1940, p4; 31 December 1941, p120; 3 December 1952, Page 4; 23 May 1953, p 4.
  • The Ogden Standard-Examiner, Ogden, Utah, 22 September 1959, p2.
  • Michigan Ensign, Volume 25, UM Libraries, 1921.
  • Nancy Dustin Moure. 2015. Index to California Art Exhibited at the Laguna Beach Art Association, 1918-1972. (Dustin Publications: Publications in California Art No. 11).
  • Cornelia M Richardson; Marjorie Poundstone; Edward Morris Brigham, jr.; Russell Holmes; Michigan Historical Commission.. 2017. Prize essays written by pupils of Michigan schools in the local history contest for 1916-17. (Lansing, Mich.: Wynkoop Hallenbeck Crawford Co.).
  • San Bernardino County Sun, October 4, 1970, page 36.
  • The Tustin News, Tustin, California, 14 November 1963, p14.

Sombrero Books welcomes comments, corrections or additional material related to any of the writers and artists featured in our series of mini-bios. Please email us or use the comments feature at the bottom of individual posts.

John Macarthur (“Jack”) Bateman (1918-1999): artist, author and architect

 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s onwards  No Responses »
Jul 302015
 

John Macarthur (“Jack”) Bateman was a painter, author and architect who was born on 9 October 1918 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and died on 15 March 1999. Bateman moved to Ajijic with his wife Laura Woodruff Bateman and three young children in 1952; the couple quickly became pillars of the local community, making exemplary contributions to the local social, cultural and artistic scene.

The Batemans were living in New York City prior to moving to Mexico. They responded to an advert in The New York Times which offered a home in Ajijic, together with five servants and a boat, for the princely sum of 150 dollars a month.

Jack Bateman studied architecture at the Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University), prior to be called up for military service in January 1942. He served in the U.S. Navy from 21 January 1942 to 22 September 1945 at various Naval Air Stations, including a spell in North Africa flying submarine-hunting dirigibles. After the war, he completed his studies and then set up an industrial design studio in New York to produce, among other things, molded architectural elements made of plaster.

According to a blog post by Jack’s son-in-law Tom Vanderzyl, this led to Bateman having an unexpectedly significant impact on the work of the great German-born abstract expressionist artist Hans Hofmann who was living on the floor below:

…the painter/architect John MacArthur Bateman had a studio just above Hans Hoffmann (sic). In his studio, John poured large heavy 55-gallon drums of plaster into molds for architectural elements. It seems one day a plaster mold broke and sent 55 gallons of plaster pouring across his wooden plank floor that was also the ceiling of the studio under him, and the plaster dripped through the ceiling of the studio below. At the time, Hans had all of his paintings out looking them over for his upcoming show. Hans shouted upstairs in German for it to stop and that he needed help covering his work from the dripping plaster. Bateman along with his klutz brother-in-law, who had dropped the mold in the first place, came down to help. They used blankets and canvas in an attempt to cover the paintings, but it was too late. The plaster was setting up and the damage was done. Bateman put the best spin on it by telling Hans that his paintings needed that texture made by the pressed fabric and wet plaster and that the new tactile surface was in many ways more interesting. Now, he only needed to paint over the white plaster to get a far more interesting surface. Hans Hoffmann’s show was a success, and he would pop up to borrow plaster from time to time and talk with Bateman about materials.

bateman-book-coverFor the first few years in Mexico, Jack Bateman commuted back and forth to New York, spending about one week a month in the U.S. At home in Mexico, he spent time on his art and began to write. He authored five books including Loch Ness Conspiracy (New York: R. Speller & Sons, 1987), as well as a play, Caldo Michi, first performed in Ajijic in November 1998.

When the Lakeside Little Theater needed a new home in the mid-1980s, Bateman was a strong supporter of a plan to build a purpose-built facility on land donated by Ricardo O’Rourke, and acted as architect. The theater opened in 1987 and became the permanent home of Mexico’s most active English-language theater.

At various times sailor, artist, pilot, architect, writer and marketing consultant, whatever he turned his mind to, Jack Bateman made many unique contributions to the world.

For her part, Laura Bateman was a patron of the local arts scene in Ajijic, opening the village’s first purpose-built gallery, Rincón del Arte, at Hidalgo #41, Ajijic in about 1962. (For a couple of years prior to that, she had arranged shows in her own home). Rincón del Arte, which ran for many years, had monthly shows, featuring dozens and dozens of artists.For example, Whitford Carter exhibited at Rincón del Arte in both February 1967 and August 1968, while Peter Huf and his wife Eunice (Hunt) Huf held a joint exhibit there in December 1967 .

Jack and Laura Bateman’s eldest daughter, Alice M. Bateman, studied in Guadalajara, London (U.K.), New York and Italy before becoming a successful professional artist-sculptor based in Forth Worth, Texas.

Sombrero Books welcomes comments, corrections or additional material related to any of the writers and artists featured in our series of mini-bios. Please use the comments feature at the bottom of individual posts, or email us.

Jaime Lopez Bermudez, artist and architect

 1940s  13 Responses »
Mar 192015
 

Jaime López Bermúdez (Mexico City 1916-) is a Mexican artist and architect who lived and worked for at least several months in Ajijic in the mid-1940s. He exhibited some of his painting in a group show in 1944 at the Villa Montecarlo in Chapala, alongside paintings by Betty Binkley, Ernesto Butterlin (“Lin”), Otto Butterlin, Ann Medalie, Sylvia Fein and others.

His stay at Lake Chapala is briefly described in an article published in 1945 by American author Neill James, who had moved to Ajijic a couple of years earlier. Jaime López Bermúdez, “a surrealist from the Capital, occupied a huertita overlooking the lake and worked for several months with his charming wife, Virginia, and a Mexican cat for company.”

In reality, Virginia was a long-time girlfriend, and López Bermúdez’s status was correctly listed as “single” on the certificate of his marriage to American-born Josephine Blanche Cohen Sokolski in Mexico City in December 1949. Unfortunately the marriage did not last very long. After living in Jaime’s experimental house (see next paragraph) for about a year, the couple moved to the U.S., but split up shortly after their son Jon Dario (now Cody Sokolski) was born in Manhattan on 1 December 1951. Jaime returned to Mexico.

Portrait of Jaime Lopez Bermudez, ca 1951, by Elizabeth Timberman.

Portrait of Jaime López Bermúdez, ca 1951, by Elizabeth Timberman.

In the early 1950s, López Bermúdez gained reputation as an architect. He was considered one of Mexico’s more important “modernist” architects, and was featured in a special August 1951 issue of Arts and Architecture devoted to Mexican architecture. That issue included photos of a one-room home designed and built by López Bermúdez (for himself) in the Santa Fe district close to Mexico City. The design was a modernist, steel-framed one-room house, with garage underneath, which could be completed for under 1500 dollars. According to the accompanying text, “Jaime López Bermúdez is a painter as well architect, this duel role being a commonplace among young and old of his profession in Mexico. The mural on the front of the house is his.”

At a later stage of his life, though the precise dates are unclear, López Bermúdez opened and ran an art gallery, Galeria Coyote Flaco, in upscale Coyoacán, in the southern part of Mexico City, for several years. In the early 1960s, López Bermúdez was the first to recognize the artistic talent of British-American photographer Jon Naar. He persuaded Naar to exhibit his photographs of Mexico City street scenes in the Galeria Coyote Flaco in 1963. The exhibit, entitled “El Ojo de un extrañjero” (“The eye of an outsider”) launched Naar into a hugely successful career as an artist-photographer.

Sombrero Books welcomes comments, corrections or additional material related to any of the writers and artists featured in our series of mini-bios. Please use the comments feature at the bottom of individual posts, or email us.