Casa Catherwood gallery on Calle 59, Colonia Centro, Mérida
This grand old home in the city’s Santiago district had all the refined bones of a classic turn-of-the-century henequen mansion.
But, as often happens in Mérida’s Centro Histórico, the home had been “updated” over the years to include indoor bathrooms – formed by thin cement walls slicing off pockets of the grand old rooms – and accompanying infrastructure – giant cement water tanks built in what had once been a charming central courtyard. The program for the project included converting the home into a public gallery, café and bookstore. This required the installation of all new plumbing and electrical infrastructure to accommodate air conditioning, gallery-type lighting and public bathrooms for increased traffic flow. The cement tanks were removed and the central courtyard restored to a pleasant, breezy space where visitors can sit and enjoy a coffee from the bar inspired by Paris bistros. The space is now home to Casa Catherwood – a gallery featuring the work of Frederick Catherwood who, with American journalist John. L. Stevens, visited Yucatán in the 1840s and painted the magnificent abandoned Mayan structures they found in the region.
