SAH Archipedia Highlights: Hispanic Heritage Month 2021

In celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month (September 15–October 15), explore historic Hispanic neighborhoods on SAH Archipedia, and the cultural centers that celebrate Hispanic heritage at the national and local levels. 

Little Havana | SAH ARCHIPEDIA (sah-archipedia.org)

Photograph by Valerie, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Miami’s Little Havana area is the historical heart of the Cuban American community. The main commercial strip of this area is Southwest 8th Street, universally known as Calle Ocho. Today this street hums with Cuban restaurants, tobacco factories, guayabera shops, bakeries, and music clubs.  Read more…

Hispanic Cultural Center of Idaho | SAH ARCHIPEDIA (sah-archipedia.org)

Photograph by Carlos Auces

The Hispanic Cultural Center of Idaho represents a victory over the discrimination that Hispanics have historically faced in southern Idaho, where they have played an underappreciated role in the development of the state’s agriculture economy. The center’s liberal use of color, scale, and water is influenced by the work of Ricardo Legorreta, the Mexican modernist who celebrated ancient and modern Mexican architecture through overscaled primary geometries accented with bold colors and water features. Read more…

Barrio Viejo | SAH ARCHIPEDIA (sah-archipedia.org)

Photograph by Jennifer Levstik

Barrio Viejo is one Tucson’s oldest neighborhoods and is the name given to an area originally known as Barrio Libre that was settled south of the original Spanish Presidio. This unique neighborhood features multi-family row houses, as well as Sonoran and Transitional architectural styles that lend a distinctly Mexican urban streetscape to this historic neighborhood. Barrio Viejo continues to serve as a lasting reminder of Tucson’s Mexican-American roots and its adobe architectural tradition. Read more…

Barelas Historic District | SAH ARCHIPEDIA (sah-archipedia.org)

Photograph by Asaavedra32, CC BY-SA 3.0

One of the oldest communities in Albuquerque, Barelas was successively a colonial settlement in the seventeenth century, an agricultural village in the eighteenth century, a working-class neighborhood transformed by the railroad in the nineteenth century, and a thriving commercial strip associated with the automobile in the twentieth century. More recently recognized as a center of Hispanic culture, Barelas’s identity has gone through multiple phases and is as complex as the economic changes that have shaped its history. Read more…

National Hispanic Cultural Center | SAH ARCHIPEDIA (sah-archipedia.org)

Photograph by Regina N. Emmer

The national and local politics of cultural identity converge in the National Hispanic Cultural Center. Built by the state of New Mexico to celebrate the nation’s diverse Hispanic cultures and heritages, the Center was also meant to serve as an instrument of revitalization for the local Hispanic community of Barelas. Read more…