San Juan Antiguo
San Juan Antiguo is one of the 18 barrios of San Juan, Puerto Rico. San Juan Antiguo is further divided into 7 subbarrios. San Juan Antiguo is located entirely within the Isleta de San Juan, a small island off the coast of Puerto Rico where the original colonial settlement of San Juan was founded. It is connected to the main island of Puerto Rico by two bridges and a causeway.
Name
The name of the barrio dates to the original foundation of the city of San Juan, originally named Puerto Rico de San Juan Bautista at the moment of its foundation in 1521, San Juan Bautista being the name given to the island of Puerto Rico by the earliest Spanish settlers. By the 18th century, the ambiguous and colloquial use of San Juan Bautista and Puerto Rico for both the city and the island in time led to the unofficial renaming of the island and the city as Puerto Rico and San Juan, respectively. As the city itself further expanded beyond the islet into the towns of Santurce and Río Piedras, the barrio was officially named Antiguo to distinguish it from the rest of the modern city. This naming convention of calling an urban core-barrio ''Pueblo Antiguo or Pueblo Viejo is also seen in other municipalities' barrios such as Pueblo Viejo in Guaynabo, the location of the first colonial settlement in both that municipality and the island of Puerto Rico.The name San Juan Antiguo refers to the geographical and political subdivision of the municipality of San Juan, not to be confused with Old San Juan, the historic district and tourist attraction located within the barrio itself. Historically, the names San Juan Antiguo and Viejo San Juan were often used interchangeably due to the synonymous nature of the adjectives antiguo and viejo. However, the name San Juan Antiguo is almost never used today to refer to the historic district itself. The name San Juan by itself is often also used to refer to the barrio San Juan Antiguo, with many Puerto Ricans today still referring to the rest of the modern city outside of the isleta'' as Río Piedras.
History
The first documented inhabitants of the area now known as San Juan Antiguo were the indigenous Taino, with evidence of small fishing villages being found in Puerta de Tierra subbarrio during the 19th and 20th centuries. The first European settlement of the barrio began on August 8, 1511, when the settlement of Caparra was abandoned in favor of a new town planned across the bay in the southwestern corner of the Isleta de San Juan. The new settlement was officially founded on August 15, 1521. By the end of the 16th century, the town was the fully-functional administrative center for the Spanish colonization of the rest of Puerto Rico and beyond. The establishment of a well-defended port in the San Juan Bay also established the settlement as a key point for the Spanish military, trade and expansion into the New World.Across its history from its foundation and by the 17th century onwards, the Spanish-founded city of Puerto Rico de San Juan Bautista was coextensive with the modern barrio of San Juan Antiguo. This continued to be the case until the annexation of the town of San Mateo de Cangrejos into the city in 1863. The district corresponding to San Juan Antiguo was often mentioned in documents of the time as Puerto Rico de San Juan, Puerto Rico de Puerto Rico, San Juan de Puerto Rico or Plaza de San Juan Bautista when distinguishing it from the wider "town of San Juan", which was now growing to become one of the largest towns in the island. The administrative entity of the barrio emerged after the annexation of Santurce, during the second half of the 19th century, first known as Barrio de San Juan.In the aftermath of the Spanish–American War, Puerto Rico became a territorial colony of the United States of America. According to the 1899 census of Puerto Rico conducted by the United States War Department, the population of the barrio of San Juan Antiguo was 33,006 inhabitants. With the implementation of new administrative practices during the 20th century, the core urban barrio of each Puerto Rican municipality came to be officially known as Pueblo, which was the case of the name of the barrio used from then on: San Juan Pueblo. In the late 20th century, these Pueblo barrios were officially changed to barrio-pueblo, to explicitly identify them for the context of the 1990 and subsequent US censuses. In the case of the municipality of San Juan, which features multiple urban cores rather than a single center as in most other Puerto Rican municipalities, the name San Juan Antiguo was chosen instead of renaming the barrio to San Juan barrio-pueblo. The name of the barrio Pueblo, located in the now district of Río Piedras, serves as a reminder of that barrio's former status as the urban core of the former municipality of Río Piedras before its annexation to the modern city and municipality of San Juan in 1951. San Juan Antiguo, however, continues to serve as the administrative center for the municipality of San Juan with the San Juan City Hall and numerous other municipal and civic buildings located there.
Geography
San Juan Antiguo is located entirely within the Isleta de San Juan. Measuring 1.02 square miles across, the barrio is coextensive with the isleta. The total jurisdiction including water spans 2.63 square miles. This total area includes the isleta, several reefs and islets located around the main isleta, and portions of the San Juan Bay, the San Antonio Channel and the Condado Lagoon.Despite being located in an islet, the barrio is relatively hilly and rocky, with only the eastern and southern coasts being relatively flat. Due to the continuous levels development of the fortification systems across the islet, its topography has drastically changed throughout its history. At approximately 140 feet of elevation above sea level, the former highest point of both the barrio and the islet was located at the promontory of El Morro at the northeastern tip of the islet, now occupied by the Castillo San Felipe del Morro. Another former highest point was located at the current Castillo San Cristóbal. Other elevations include Loma de los Vientos located near the Capitol of Puerto Rico, and Las Ánimas Hill, which at 128 feet is the highest still-existing natural point of the islet. Although several man-made ditches and drainage systems have been built throughout its history, no natural rivers, creeks or bodies of fresh water have ever existed in San Juan Antiguo.