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Hotel Ponce Intercontinental
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Ponce, Puerto Rico

Hotel Ponce Intercontinental

The building is crucial in the understanding of the role that architecture, particularly modern architecture, played in the development of Puerto Rico's project of modernity.

Nadya Nenadich

Visible from almost anywhere in the city of Ponce, Puerto Rico’s second city, this hotel sits in ruins.  Built in 1960 and designed by William B. Tabler, the hotel, which has been abandoned for decades, represents a time when American corporations were staking their claims abroad—in this case, Pan American Airways and its Intercontinental Hotel chain.  In tropical Puerto Rico, a new indoor/outdoor architecture was developed. While some hotels from this period have been restored, including the Caribe Hilton in San Juan, others farther away from the center of tourism have not.  The legacy of midcentury tropical modernism is being replaced by climate-controlled super luxury.

Submitted by Nadya Nenadich

Photo Credit: 
© Josué Ortiz
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