Hotel Metropole

Las Palmas de Gran Canaria · Category: Memory · Subcategory: Memory spaces

The Elder Dempster y Cía Ltd. was the promoter of another of the hotels, which together with the hotel Santa Catalina and the hotel Bella Vista, would be the forerunner of the future of the Ciudad Jardín district of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. We refer to the hotel Metropole, between the neighbourhoods of Arenales and Alcaravaneras, near to the spa of Santa Catalina. The initial project was modified after having been carried out, as repairs were needed on part of the building that had burnt down. They made the most of this circumstance to add on a fifth floor, according to plans by D. Fernando Navarro y Navarro, plus a module to extend the kitchens. This file dates from 1908.

The building had a longitudinal section with two small parts sticking out, corresponding to the octagonal shaped turrets that crowned it on the sides of the central structure. Also on the eastern and western angles, there were other, smaller square ones, which give the cubic building a kind of rythm. These turrets were like actual kiosks, which rose up from the building's terrace, and very similar in appearance to other temples around that time that were placed on other buildings (including the hotel Santa Catalina itself) and in the city's public spaces (at the Plaza de la Democracia for instance). A wooden lattice, with low arches and blinds closed off the main bodies of these turrets. Its roof had eight sloping wooden planes, in the centre, and four on the edges. The latter had bulbous domes on the vertex of each one. They were all topped off with vanes. During the building phase, this was modified by turning the viewpoint turrets into three simply shaped prisms.

The Hotel Metropole was replaced in 1959 by the project by Miguel Martín Fernández de la Torre, which constituted the present day administration offices for the Town Hall of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria.

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