Casa Gil Roldán

Santa Cruz de Tenerife · Category: Architecture · Subcategory: Civil architecture · Year: 1880? · Authors: Manuel de Cámara

This building was erected at the extension of Castillo Street at the end of the 19th century. It may have been designed by the architect Manuel de Cámara, author of this extension of the street up to Weyler Square, where a group of buildings very similar from an aesthetic point of view gave great typological uniformity to the whole area.

This house, in particular, is the last construction built above the block between San Lucas and Alfaro streets. It was built for the Gil Roldán family, a lineage of merchants, lawyers, politicians and intellectuals, very active in Santa Cruz society since the early 19th century.

The house presents a sober two-storey façade which, with millimetric symmetry, faces both streets. Regularity in the openings and balconies on the upper floor enclosed by wrought iron are its main features. Inside, a square-plan courtyard distributes the spaces.

The building was expropriated by the City Council in the 1960s to prevent the planned extension of Alfaro Street, a project that decades later was dismissed when this area of the old town of Santa Cruz was declared protected.

The ground floor of this house was occupied for a long time by the Librería Papelería Universal and the Sans Printing House. Recently, the City Council has ceded the property to the Parliament of the Canary Islands, which plans to install the new headquarters of the Diputado del Común (Ombudsman) there.

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