Picturesque version of the english-limenian style of housing in Santa Beatriz, 1920-30

Abstract

This article is based on a master's degree thesis** that aimed to explain certain traits of a superstructural reality in architecture in Lima in the 1920s; Lima was conceived as a utopian Europe, and the architectural styles of "the old world" were transplanted to this capital city to represent, paradoxically, the "new fatherland". The imported europeanizing styles reflected in Lima the action of a culture of domination from England. The picturesque style, or "pintoresquismo" as this trend is usually referred to here, had its maximum expression in the upper-middle class chalet. With the spreading of the English-European garden-city model, originally dreamed up for suburban areas, Lima's dominant classes transferred the ideal of the romantic European country house to the new urban areas of Lima. The picturesque style is studied in Santa Beatriz, a district promoted by the government as a garden-district. Limenian stylistic versions with an English influence- both picturesque and academizing- are selected here, since they became a collective local aspiration. Which social classes did these versions represent? What local features of their own did these versions express?