Town Hall

Santa Cruz de Tenerife · Category: Architecture · Subcategory: Civil architecture · Year: 1898-1916 · Authors: Antonio Pintor y Ocete

The origin of the building that today houses the Town Hall of Santa Cruz was to serve as the seat of the Palace of Justice. The city urgently needed to provide the Courts with a dignified place that met the appropriate conditions. In 1894, a plot was acquired for this purpose on Méndez Núñez street at the corner of Santa Rita (now Viera y Clavijo) and the plans were commissioned to the municipal architect Antonio Pintor.

In 1904, without being finished, the municipal Corporation moved into the new building and began holding its sessions in a ground floor room adapted for this purpose, since the main hall was still a space under construction. The Audiencia, the body for which the building had been designed, was installed on the upper floor, but years later it would move to another building.

From this point on, the Town Hall left behind the various itinerant headquarters it had occupied since 1813: private houses of the mayors themselves, rented buildings or confiscated convents, such as the one of San Pedro de Alcántara, next to the church of San Francisco.

Notable features of the current municipal palace façade include the pediment, made of artificial stone by Arturo López de Vergara based on a sketch by Eduardo Tarquis and Teodomiro Robayna; and the entrance doors to the building, work of the workshop of José Ruiz, according to sketches by the architect Antonio Pintor himself.

Inside, the magnificent balustrade of the main staircase stands out, as well as the decorative elements of the plenary hall, which were made by the artist Francisco Granados Calderón. The ceiling scotia panels are the work of Martínez Abades and the main ceiling motif The Truth Overcoming Error is by the Canarian painter Manuel González Méndez. The main stained glass windows and skylights, as well as the glass of the upper doors and windows, were installed in 1908. The sixteen lanterns and chandeliers were imported from Germany.

In this building, in addition to municipal and judicial offices, the School of Commerce and the School of Nautical Studies were installed, as well as a municipal Meteorological Observatory.

With the construction, already in the 1950s, of the building for the Civil Government right in front of it, the Town Hall lost the possibility of having a front square that would give it greater prestige.

Today the Town Hall building houses the Mayor's Office and the offices of the political groups that make up the Corporation, while the administrative and management offices are distributed across several points in the city.

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