Pieces of concrete are falling from one of the most emblematic buildings in Central Havana, the Great National Masonic Temple of Cuba. Due to the lack of maintenance, the building registers fragments of part of the roof in its large portal that can be fatal for any passer-by.
“Do not pass, danger,” reads this Saturday on a sign that barely indicates a bundle of debris that fell a few hours ago and that hangs from a rope that delimits the space with the remains of the roof, on the corner facing the street. Santiago.
The eleven-story building, considered by many as one of the most solid in this area of the capital and whose construction was carried out by the architect Emilio Vasconcelos Frayde, houses on the ground floor a Cuban Post Office and the Security and Protection Company of the Ministry of Communications.
Very close to the busy corner of Belascoaín and Carlos III, where the Yumurí store is located, countless people pass through the portals of the Great Temple every day and others line up to buy postage stamps or make a money order. Also, very close, there is a bus stop for routes such as the P12 and A65, in addition to several primary schools.
Each of these passers-by could have been the victim of a piece of the building detaching, although chance meant that at the moment it fell to the ground there was no one close enough to be injured. A coincidence that some fear will not be repeated in the next crash if the state brigades do not do something to stop the deterioration.
The building of the Grand Lodge can be seen from different points of the city and is clearly identified by its dome, a terrestrial sphere with the symbol of the Freemasons. With a mixture of styles in which rationalism and Art Decó coexist, until recently the property raised sighs among the residents of a neighborhood where housing deterioration is the most common.
The Lodge, with its spiritual connotations and its sober entrance from which a peculiar sculpture of José Martí can be seen sitting, was one of the few constructions that survived with some dignity the onslaught of time and lack of maintenance. But for years it has been playing its turn also in the decline that marks the passage of the entire city.
The globe of the world that the crown stopped working for years after a fire, the granite floor of the portal is full of scars left by hydraulic repairs and even the map of the continents that was displayed on one side has been falling off the tiles that make up the countries. The clock over the entrance stopped ticking the hours long ago, something that few have noticed in a Havana where time is of little value.
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