The custom of rating buildings and furniture in terms of their value as part of the country’s heritage is relatively new in Colombia. A law (47) passed in 1920 created legislation covering property that was designated as being of cultural importance. Although the country’s historic buildings had been kept almost intact from the colonial period until the 1920s, the fact is that the modernizing of the State, the growth of the coffee industry, industrialization, the construction of public works, and urban development (all of which were financed by the “dance of the millions,” that is, the money paid to Colombia by the United States as compensation for the expropriation of Panama) contributed to a gradual transformation of Colombian cities.
Some artists in the early twentieth century, such as Ricardo Moros Urbina (1865−1942), were aware of the impending changes that would affect urban buildings, and set about writing newspaper articles of an educational nature in an attempt to protect the national heritage at a time when its value was barely appreciated.
Such was the case of the Claustro de Santo Domingo, one of two important colonial buildings in Bogotá that were demolished in the early twentieth century (the other was the Church of Santa Inés, torn down in 1957 to broaden the Carrera Décima). Moros Urbina coauthored the report reviewed here, which was supported by the Academia Nacional de Historia, and which advocated preserving the building for its architectural, artistic, and historical value. In 1938, in spite of these efforts, the government decided to demolish the Claustro in order to build a group of buildings to house government departments. The decision was approved by the president of Colombia, Eduardo Santos (1938−42) and the colonial cloister was eventually torn down in 1947.
Ricardo Moros Urbina’s interest in preserving Colombia’s colonial architecture was not necessarily driven by a full understanding of the need to save the country’s cultural heritage. The inspiration for his commitment more likely originated in a branch of the philosophical-Hispanist movement—originally founded by the artist and cultural promoter Alberto Urdaneta (1845−87) and carried on by the painter and art critic Roberto Pizano (1896−1929)—that Moros Urbina joined as a visual artist and critic. This branch, supported in certain Colombian intellectual circles during a period of conservative hegemony (1886−1930), needed the Hispanic colonial world in order to survive and become a tradition. It is therefore not difficult to understand why a painter like Moros Urbina wanted to protect this kind of heritage, and it is especially important to remember how the interests of Moros Urbina the painter (rooted in the “costumbrismo” and “españolería” styles of the period) overlap the interests of Moros Urbina the critic (defender of the Hispanic architectural heritage).
