Identifier: standardguidetoc00reyn (find matches)
Title: Standard guide to Cuba : a new and complete guide to the island of Cuba, with maps, illustrations, routes of travel, history, and an English-Spanish phrase book
Year: 1909 (1900s)
Authors: Reynolds, Charles B. (Charles Bingham), 1856-1940
Subjects:
Publisher: Havana : New York : Foster & Reynolds
Contributing Library: University of Pittsburgh Library System
Digitizing Sponsor: Lyrasis Members and Sloan Foundation

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26 THE STANDARD GUIDE. The rooms of Havana houses are very large and the ceilings are high,eighteen feet being the average. In high-roofed houses there are some-times no ceilings, the apartment being left open to the ridge. The floor isof tile or cement, without carpet, and there are vast expanses of vacantwall space. Upholstered furniture is unknown; cool cane and wicker pre-vail. The rocking-chair is universal—in the house, in the office, in thecommittee rooms of the Senate. The typical hotel bedroom has a tiled floor without any carpet savefor a narrow rug in front of the bed. The ceiling is from i8 to 25 feetin height; the windows opening from the floor are almost as high; thereare slatted blinds on the outside and solid shutters on the inside, with per-haps one small pane of glass. The bed is canopied with a mosquito nettingwdiich may be a handsome specimen of lacework; the mattress is verythin or wanting altogether. A swinging slat screen permits leaving thebedroom door open.
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HOTEL BEDROOMS. PLAZA DE ARMAS, A GROUP of interesting points which are near together and may bevisited in connection, are clustered about the Plaza de Armas. These arethe Palace, Templete, Fuerza, Cathedral, and the shopping streets Obispoand OReilly. Near the Plaza is the Caballeria Wharf. It was the practice of the Spaniards when they laid out a new town toreserve a space in the center as a public square, about which the militaryand civil buildings might cluster, and the open field of which might beused as a drill ground for the soldiery, thus giving to it the name Plazade Armas, or place of arms. In keeping with such a custom, this opensquare was reserved for a plaza when the city was founded in 1519. Herewe get back to the beginning of Havana. On the east of the squarenearer the shore of the bay still stands a ceiba tree descended from theceiba which originally shaded the spot where the founders of the cityheld the first mass. On the north is the old fortress La Fuerza, wellnamed

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