Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Edificios de la Ciudad de México

Here are some more photos I took during Easter Vacation. These are of some important buildings. It can be said they are landmarks (at least for those who live here)...




Tlatelolco.
This building belongs to a huge housing comples made up
of three types of buildings: 4 stories, 8 stories, and
14 sories. Construction began in 1964.
During the 1985 earthquake, the Nuevo Leon
building, the same size as this one fell.
Because of this, eleven other buildings
had to be demolished.





Plaza de las tres Culturas.
Plaza of the three cultures.
This is also in the Tlatelolco complex. In the background
a modern building. In the middle a Spanish church,
and in the front (although it can't be seen too well)
are the ruins of an Aztec temple.





Correos de México.
Also called Palacio Postal was founded by
Mexican President Porfirio Díaz in 1907.
It is still used as such today, but it also houses
many art and photographic expositions.






Palacio de Bellas Artes
The construction of this building began in 1904,
but because of te Mexican Revolution in 1910 and
technical problems like sinking, it wasn't
completed till 1934.
It contains murals painted by José Clemente Orozco,
Diego Rivera, and David Alfaro Siqueiros.







Torre Latinoamericana
It was built in 1956, and was the tallest building
in Mexico till 1984. The engineers who built the tower
used an innovative system (for that period) that was supposed
to help the building
be able to withstand earthquakes.
It is built in a potentialy dangerous area of the city,
and it came out undamaged during the earthquakes
1957 and 1985.
During the 1985 earthquake, Adolfo Zeevaret, one of the
engineers who constructed the tower, was at his 25th floor
office witnessing how building around him
collapsed, while the tower remained unharmed.

Hope you enjoyed this short tour of downtown Mexico. If you are interested in more information and photos, just type in the names into Wikipedia. There is lots more there. Good night.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

How interesting! We just don't have palacios around here :) They're lovely, what history.

Did you have time to go into the Palacio Postal and the Palacio de Bellas Artes to see any of the exhibits?

I would love to see Aztec ruins someday.

Hope everything continues to go well there with you all.

Angie said...

No, we weren't able to go to these places this time, but we have been there before. We were going to go to an exposition at the post office the day before we we were supposed to leave, but we decided to come back home a day earlier, so it wasn't possible.
And all is well here.