Subira House

About this property

The Residencia Subirá (Subirá Residence), also known as Residencia Frau (Frau Residence), is a historic building located on Reina Street in Ponce, Puerto Rico, in the city's historic district. The building dates from 1910. It was designed by the architect Blas Silva. The architecture follows the Ponce Creole tradition. Built in 1910, this house was a wedding gift from Asisclo Subirá Ramírez de Arellano and María Echevarría Alvarado to their daughter, Concepción Subirá Echevarría, and her husband, Manuel Frau de la Sierra. The house has always been used as a family residence and has been home to three generations of this family. It is currently (January 25, 2010) owned by William González and his three sons through his marriage with Mercedes Frau Subirá, daughter of the original owners, Concepción Subirá Echevarría and Manuel Frau de la Sierra. The Subirá Residence (Frau Residence) is considered a prime example of the architecture of Ponce's aristocracy of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This structure is one of the remaining symbols of Ponce's "Golden Period" in which landed families lived in the urban core and large numbers of immigrants from Europe, Latin America and the other Antilles had turned the originally small settlement of Ponce into the cultural capital of Puerto Rico. The Ponce Creole architecture to which this building belongs is vital in itself since it represents the birth of a high-style native architecture, a hybrid of influences rather than the purely Spanish, or spontaneous vernacular expressions of previous centuries. In particular, the Frau Residence is significant within this genre as it was designed by one of Ponce's most well-known architects, Blas Silva. Silva was particularly renowned among the wealthy classes of the period. His buildings are usually characterized by what is popularly referred to as "wedding-cake architecture" of the landed nouveau riche, for the richness of ornament and detail. Other buildings by Silva include the Monsanto Residence and the Salazar-Candal Residence, both listed in the NRHP. The Frau Residence has been classed as one of Silva's most reserved houses, architecturally, as it is relatively simple and not as richly detailed as others. Rather, it relies on scale and form, and the beauty of the classical elements themselves, more than upon the applied ornamentation to portray the prominence of the original residents. It also remains very faithful to the traditional vernacular house type of the region, in plan and in execution, resulting in a graceful, refined version of the one-storey, full-width front porch house of the southern coast of Puerto Rico. In addition to the local influences, Silva reflects the interests of the Arts and Crafts movement and the academicism of the Ecole des Beaux Arts in the facade treatment, resulting in an austere and grand, yet lightweight elevation. Thus, Silva, as had other foreign-trained architects, succeeded in integrating classical education with the traditional elements of the Spanish Caribbean.

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Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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