March 1, 2020 - 170 - "Mexican Casa - 11 - "Our House in History"

Looking out of the doors of the Allende house/
Museum of San Miguel

Tourist for the Day

     I've vaguely intended to visit the Museum of San Miguel de Allende...for the last twenty years that we've been coming here.  A visit from Michael's brother, Andy, caused me to move it from the 'do someday' list to the 'do today' list.  And I'm really glad we went.                                                                                                                                        The museum is in the home of Ignacio de Allende.  The house itself is very grand.  There's a central courtyard with loggias on all sides.  There's furniture from around the time he lived there and information about how the house was used and customs of the day.                                                                                                                                                   There's also a lot of information about the role Allende played in Mexico's fight for freedom from Spain.                                                                                                                     

City Planning in San Miguel

      What was most interesting to me were the displays with information about how and where the town was founded, and how it's developed through the years.                                                                                                There were some paintings done to illustrate the vision of early city planners.  (Early 1700's)  The paintings, themselves, sort of cracked me up.  Part of the painting was how the town currently was, but they had these split images; part showing how things were currently, and part showing what the vision was.   Sort of like a suburban Fox and Jacobs (insert major builder in your area here) community layout...with pictures of the fields, orchards, and farms they were about to level, in the same painting.

Hey - That's Where We Live!...but 300 Years Ago

     One paintings depicted one of the churches behind us.  This church is not only part of the row of church domes and spires that forms the backdrop for our rooftop, but we've been told that the walls of our dining room were part of the outer garden walls of the church.                                                                                                                                                                                               From staring at the photo I took of the painting...blown up way beyond being a very good image...I think that, maybe, the South wall of our dining room is the oldest wall, and other 'new' (sometime after 1701) walls were added to the West, North, and East.  

Where We Live!...about 68 Years Ago

     We were thrilled this summer to find a photo from the early 1950's showing the same church in the background.  We could see that all the walls to the garden were built by then.  

Better Intel Than Our House in Texas   

     Our house in Texas was built in 1916 and I have spent quite a bit of time trying to find information about who built it and who has lived in it through the years.  (Without a whole lot of success.)  It's  pretty interesting to just stumble across photos of our house here...parts of which are a heckuva lot older.  

     I guess if that house were built in colonial Williamsburg I would be able to see a lot more images of its location through the years.    

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"As an architect you design for the present, with an awareness of the past, for a future which is essentially unknown."

-Norman Foster

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"It was a mistake to think of houses, old houses, as being empty.  They were filled with memories, with the faded echoes of voices.  Drops of tears, drops of blood, the ring of laughter, the edge of tempers that had ebbed and flowed between the walls, in to the walls, over the years."

-Nora Roberts

"...far from estimating that he fell into crime of high treason, he considered it high loyalty..."

-Ignacio de Allende

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