Colonia Roma


Colonia Roma, also called La Roma or simply, Roma, is a district located in the Cuauhtémoc borough of Mexico City just west of the city's historic center. The area comprises two colonias: Roma Norte and Roma Sur, divided by Coahuila street.
The colonia was originally planned as an upper-class Porfirian neighborhood in the early twentieth century. By the 1940s, it had become a middle-class neighborhood in slow decline, with the downswing being worsened by the 1985 Mexico City earthquake. Since the 2000s, the area has seen increasing gentrification.
Roma and neighbouring Condesa are known for being the epicenter of trendy/hipster subculture in the city, and Roma has consequently been called the "Williamsburg of Mexico City". Additionally, the area rivals Polanco as the center of the city's culinary scene. Besides residential buildings, the neighborhood streets are lined with restaurants, bars, clubs, shops, cultural centers, churches and galleries. Many are housed in former Art Nouveau and Neo-Classical buildings dating from the Porfiriato period at the beginning of the 20th century. Roma was designated as a "Barrio Mágico" by the city in 2011.

History

The area was a very shallow part of Lake Texcoco, dotted with tiny islands and one small island village of Aztacalco during the pre-Hispanic period. During the colonial period, the area dried up and became rural lands first owned by Hernán Cortés and then by the Counts of Miravalle. The village that would become known as La Romita was connected to the village of San Miguel Chapultepec by a treelined road reminiscent of one in Rome. Thereafter, the surrounding area became known as the "Potreros de Romita" and these pastures eventually lead to the naming of the colonia.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the area west of what was Mexico City proper was being turned into “modern” colonias for the wealthy seeking to escape the deterioration of the city center. The colonia's height as a wealthy enclave was from its founding in the 1900s until about the 1940s. However, wealthy residents began to move to newer neighborhoods as early as the 1940s and problems associated with urbanization began to appear in the 1950s. Older mansions began to give way to modern commercial buildings in the 1960s and 1970s as the deterioration became more serious. The 1985 Mexico City earthquake caused widespread destruction in the colonia, especially to newer and more commercial and apartment buildings, even causing one major development to mostly disappear. Since then, there have been efforts to conserve the area's architectural heritage and regain some of its former prestige with some success.

Geography

Boundaries

Roma's borders are:
Avenida Coahuila divides Roma into the officially recognized neighborhoods of Roma Norte and Roma Sur.
File:Coloniaroma6.jpg|thumb|Park median in Avenida Álvaro Obregón

Sub-districts

Roma consists of several sub-areas:

Roma Norte II and III

Roma Norte II and III, east of Avenida de los Insurgentes and north of Av. Coahuila, bisected by Roma's signature boulevard, Avenida Álvaro Obregón, is where the vast majority of the hippest restaurants, bars, clubs, etc. are found. It is home to about 1,100 mansions and other architecturally and historically important structures, mostly built between 1906 and 1939. Most of these are no longer residences but rather offices, cultural centers and other businesses. Examples of these adaptations include the Casa Lamm Cultural Center, the Casa Universitaria del Libro, the main building of the Universidad de Londres and the various art galleries which are mostly found on Colima street. In the northeast corner of this area is the pre-Hispanic village of La Romita.

Roma Norte I – Cibeles area

Roma Norte I, west of Insurgentes, has fewer landmark buildings and is a mix of offices, restaurants, retail and residential. The Palacio de Hierro department store Durango branch occupies a city block here and the landmark Fuente de Cibeles fountain is at the center of a major cluster of restaurants, cafés and clubs.
La Romita
is a small section of Roma which used to be an independent village and colonia and whose streets are still significantly different from the rest of Roma. The territory of modern Colonia Roma in pre-Hispanic times consisted of the very shallow waters of Lake Texcoco and a number of very small islands of firm ground, on one of which stood the village of Aztacalco. It was an independent village until the very early 20th century, when it was made its own colonia in 1903 with the name of La Romita. When Colonia Roma was created, Romita was officially incorporated into it, but the local residents fought redevelopment. The area has since developed semi-independently from the rest of Colonia Roma, both in infrastructure and socially. Even today, the area is relatively difficult to access, with narrow streets leading to a very small plaza and church called Santa María de la Natividad de Aztacalco. The local residents were of a significantly lower social class than the rest of Roma, with the wealthy residents avoiding it for fear of thieves. The area still has a reputation for crime and is found at the extreme northeast of the colonia near Metro Cuauhtémoc.

Roma Sur

East of Insurgentes and south of Coahuila street, Roma Sur is much more traditional than hip Roma Norte. There are many Latin American immigrants here, plus restaurants and shops catering to them. The Mercado Medellín is located here and is famous for Latin American goods and food as well. It continues to be a predominantly residential neighborhood and has not experienced the same level of gentrification as Roma Norte. This area of the district gained international attention as a result of Alfonso Cuarón's 2018 film Roma; Cuarón lived on Tepeji Street as a child.

Centro Urbano Benito Juárez

In the far southeast corner of Roma stands the Centro Urbano Benito Juárez, or Multifamiliar Juárez, a very large apartment complex in the 1940s and early 1950s. It was one of several projects of this type by architect Mario Pani, designed to house city government workers and to be semi-autonomous with its own schools, administration, businesses etc. and incorporate as much outdoors space as possible. Carlos Mérida’s mural work here was the most important of his career and the largest mural project in Mexico in the 20th century. Most of the complex and murals were destroyed by, or demolished after the 1985 Mexico City earthquake. Most of the land where the demolished buildings stood has become the Jardín Ramón López Velarde park.

Cityscape

The colonia was an exclusive area for the wealthy on the edge of the city when it was built in the very early 20th century. Roma started to decline around the mid 20th century and was heavily affected by the 1985 Mexico City earthquake. In the 21st century, it has revived somewhat as a Bohemian area with restaurants, art galleries, offices and more. Today, the area attracts younger generations of artists, writers and urban hipsters, with rents rising once again.
Most of the streets are quiet and lined with large, leafy trees, mostly how they were laid out when the colonia was built. The largest street is Avenida Álvaro Obregón, whose traffic islands have large trees, walking paths and metal benches. On weekends, these islands fill with vendors selling art, antiques and collectibles. However, this and other of the larger streets such as Oaxaca, Querétaro and San Luis Potosí, were designated as “ejes” or axis streets in the 1950s for through traffic.
Along with the tree lined streets, green spaces were also created with the addition of small parks called plazas. The old heart of the neighborhood is the Plaza Río de Janeiro, originally called Plaza Roma. This plaza is surrounded by a number of old mansions as well as a couple a tall modern towers. In the center, there is a fountain and a replica of Michelangelo’s David. One mansion that faces this plaza is popularly called the La Casa de las Brujas although its official name is the Edificio Rio de Janeiro. The popular name of this red-brick castle-like structure, built in 1908, comes from the face that seems to be formed by the windows on the top of the corner tower and the Art Deco entrance, which was added in the 1930s. The Plaza Luis Cabrera is on the corner of Guanajuato and Orizaba Streets. It was the setting for part of a short story called “La batallas en el desierto” by José Emilio Pacheco.
While there have been efforts to restore the area's reputation as aristocratic and upscale, the area still has problems associated with deterioration. There are a number of cabarets and men's clubs, which have attracted and sustained prostitution in the area. There are still unmaintained and abandoned buildings in which live squatters and other very poor people. In the 1990s, there was a small, poor community of about 35 Otomi in the colonia, living in abject poverty. Most earned money and depend on community soup kitchens. Most lived as squatters in abandoned buildings.

Architecture

Roma is one of a number of “modern” colonias such as Colonia Juárez, Santa María la Ribera and Colonia San Rafael, which were built on what was the western edge of the city in the late 19th and early 20th centuries for wealthy residents looking to escape the city center. The streets and houses were designed and built based on European styles, which can still be seen today, especially on Orizaba, Alvaro Obregon, Colima and Tonalá Streets, where the older facades are best conserved. These were homes of bankers, factory owners, politicians, artists and businessmen who worked in the city center but lived here. Like its sister colonias, Roma has since lost many of its original mansion homes, but it has resisted this loss better. Today, there are an estimated 1,100 structures which date from the 1930s or earlier, compared to the 500 to 600 the remain in Santa María la Ribera and Colonia Juárez. Most of the area's historically and architecturally significant structures were built between 1906 and 1939. These earlier structures include examples of Neo-colonial and Art Deco, but most are “Porfirian,” meaning that they are a mix of French, Roman, Gothic and Moorish elements which were all fashionable in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. One of these old mansions was the home of television personality Paco Stanley, who says he bought the structure because of its “small friendly ghosts,” naming it “La Princesita” or The Little Princess. Stanley uses the property both as living space and office. These houses and streets have provided the backdrop for films such as Los Olvidados, filmed in La Romita by Luis Buñuel and literary works such as Batallas en el desierto by José Emilio Pacheco, Agua Quemada by Carlos Fuentes, Manifestacion de Silencios by Arturo Azuela and El vampiro de la colonia roma by Luis Zapata.
However, the colonia now also has a large number of more modern structures, defined as having been built since the 1950s. These structures came to replace many of the original structures as the character of the colonia changed, along with the lack of urban planning, zoning and the destruction caused by the 1985 earthquake. Owners of many of the older structures have had or have wanted to demolish or radically change them for economic reasons, a process which still persists today. In cases where they have succeeded, modern office and apartment buildings have appeared. Not only are these structures taller and markedly different in design, they also weigh more, affecting the ground around them and causing damage to remaining earlier structures.
While the older mansions are no longer economically viable as residences, there has been efforts since the 1990s to save them, by converting them into offices, stores, restaurants and other businesses with restrictions aimed at conserving their facades and the colonia's overall character. Like neighboring Colonia Condesa, Roma has a number of cafes, restaurants and other eateries established in older structures, especially along Álvaro Obregón, Colima, and Orizaba streets, and on plazas Río de Janeiro and Luis Cabrera.