Interwar Havana Through U.S. Tourist Views of Morro Castle, the Maine, Civic Buildings, and Street Life

Cuba

Photograph

Unknown photographer, Havana, Cuba travel photo album, circa 1920s, documents an American visitor’s encounter with Havana during the interwar years, when U.S. tourism, commercial presence, and Spanish-American War memory shaped how many American travelers interpreted the city. The photographs record arrival by steamship, harbor landmarks, civic buildings, commercial streets, factories, boulevards, monuments, cemeteries, and guarded public spaces, giving insight into both Havana’s urban landscape and the traveler’s assumptions about access, history, and spectacle. The album’s references to the USS Maine and Spanish-American War memorials place ordinary sightseeing within a longer history of U.S. intervention in Cuba; the Maine exploded in Havana Harbor on February 15, 1898, killing more than 260 sailors and intensifying the crisis that led to war with Spain.

Approximately twenty-five sepia-toned silver gelatin photographs, each about 3 x 5 inches, mounted to black album leaves with detailed handwritten captions in white pencil. The sequence begins aboard the S.S. Kroonland, with one caption reading “My first view of Havana from the deck... three miles out at sea in a dark storm,” followed by a landing view captioned “where we landed in Havana, Cuba.” The S.S. Kroonland returned to Panama Pacific Line service in 1923 on a New York to San Francisco route via Havana, the Panama Canal, and Los Angeles, supporting the album’s interwar travel context. The photographs then trace Havana’s maritime and civic topography: harbor views, Morro Castle captioned “Famous during the Spanish-American War,” the waterfront in front of the fortress, the Court House, the President’s Palace, a “600-year-old church,” the Henry Clay Cigar Store, Havana’s factory district, and public boulevards “where all streets have parks in the center.” Other images include a cemetery visit captioned “All people in Cuba are laid to rest above the ground” and a restricted-view street or carriage scene captioned, “Officer would not let me take picture but when he turned I took it anyway,” a revealing note on tourist privilege and unauthorized looking.

Several images directly record the ways American travelers consumed Havana through imperial memory and Cuban nationalist commemoration. One monument is captioned, “This was given by the Cuban people to the American soldiers that fell in the Spanish-American War,” while another marks “the spot where the Maine sank at the entrance of the harbor.” The album was made after Cuba’s formal independence in 1902 and during the long aftermath of the Platt Amendment framework, under which the United States retained extensive influence over Cuban affairs and intervened repeatedly in the early twentieth century. Album leaves chipped at edges, several with corner losses not affecting images; prints generally sharp, with strong contrast and clear annotations, very good overall. Socially revealing Havana travel album documenting how a U.S. visitor pictured Cuba through steamship tourism, colonial architecture, cigar commerce, Spanish-American War remembrance, and the everyday authority structures of an interwar Caribbean capital.

Item #22728

Price: $450.00