Lecuona Building

Santa Cruz de Tenerife · Category: Architecture · Subcategory: Civil architecture · Year: 1933 · Authors: José Enrique Marrero Regalado

This is one of the most interesting works from the rationalist period by the architect Marrero Regalado. The building, located at the corner of Méndez Núñez and Robayna streets, was designed in 1933 to occupy a plot belonging to the Lecuona García Puelles family.

Marrero proposes, following the guidelines of José Blasco (another architect active during those years in Santa Cruz), a building with a marked rationalist style. Four floors, a clever chamfer with curved lines and horizontal decorative bands that help to accentuate a very expressive effect, and rounded balconies covered by canopies. 

 The ground floor is configured by means of a continuous module that runs along the entire façade. On the side sections, which face the two streets, at height we find projecting individual balconies with circular opening details in the parapets. It is also worth highlighting, from its exterior, the carpentry and the wooden slat roller shutters. 

This interesting building has little in common with the adjacent one on Méndez Núñez street: the Cine Rex, an elegant construction also designed by Marrero twenty years later, in 1953. Here we have two revealing examples of the evolution of the work of one of the most versatile and relevant Canarian architects.

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