Villa Bertha

Santa Cruz de Tenerife · Category: Architecture · Subcategory: Civil architecture · Year: 1913? · Authors: Mariano Estanga

This curious building stands on a rectangular plot at the beginning of the path that climbs the hillside of the development now known as Las Mimosas. It is assumed to have been built in the second decade of the 20th century and its formal characteristics, clearly of Anglo-Saxon historicist style, lead us to think it is the work of the architect Mariano Estanga, who frequently practised this style at that time.  

It is a two-storey building, whose façade features exposed wooden beams, as is usual in English "cottages". Large rectangular windows are aligned on vertical axes repeated on both floors on all façades, except on the south-facing one, where there is a curious enclosed balcony covered with an independent eave. The building is topped with a pitched tile roof with a characteristic dented strip, all finished off with a spire.

From the beginning, Villa Bertha was surrounded by magnificent vegetation, both from the already existing flora in the area and from the layout of a small garden very much in the English taste, with lawn and secluded paths with rose bushes and other shrub species. 

At the time of its erection, this building was the first to be established in this privileged residential area on the outskirts of the city, from where splendid views of the town and its bay could be admired.

28.47364, -16.25689