page_title: Havana Plan Piloto
section_title: 1959 Revolution
hierarchical_section_title: Havana Plan Piloto / Architecture of the mafia / Havana Hilton / 1959 Revolution
caption_attribution_description: English: CUBA. La Havana. 1959. New Years day in front of Havana Hilton, now Havan Libre.
context_page_description: The Havana Plan Piloto was a 1955-1958 urban proposal by Town Planning Associates which included Paul Lester Wiener, Paul Schulz, the Catalan architect Josep Lluis Sert, Seely Stevenson of Value & Knecht, Consulting Engineers seeking to combine "architecture, planning, and law," in a project heavily influenced by the politics of Fulgencio Batista which in turn were dictated by his involvement with the American Mafia and their desire to augment United States tourism, and thru his architects, the modernist principles of CIAM and the Athens Charter. The Charter got its name from the location of the fourth CIAM conference in 1933, which, due to the deteriorating political situation in Russia, took place on the in SS Patris II bound for Athens from Marseilles. This conference is documented in a film commissioned by Sigfried Giedion and made by his friend Laszlo Moholy-Nagy "Architects' Congress." The Charter had a significant impact on urban planning after World War II and, thru Josep Lluis Sert and Paul Lester Wiener, on the proposed modernization of Havana and in the effort erase all vestiges of the 16th-century city.
context_section_description: Following Fidel Castro's entry into Havana on January 8, 1959, the Havana Hilton became his headquarters, with Castro residing for three months in the hotel's Continental Suite, room 2324. 
  The casinos throughout the city were briefly closed, but protests by Havana casino workers led to their reopening in February. Castro gave his first press conference in the hotel's ballroom on January 19, 1959 and soon took to giving regular interviews to international journalists in the hotel, famously declaring in the lobby that "If the Americans don’t like what is happening in Cuba, they can land the Marines, and then there will be 200,000 gringos dead."
  In October 1959, the Habana Hilton hosted the week-long American Society of Travel Agents annual international convention, which had been scheduled before the Revolution. Castro and other officials attempted to present an image of Cuba as a continued tropical paradise for American tourists, as the country desperately needed the revenue, but growing anti-American political rhetoric was already having an impact on bookings at the increasingly empty hotel. On New Year's Eve 1959/1960, Castro hosted an elaborate party in the Pavilion ballroom atop the hotel, designed to promote Cuba to Americans. The party was attended by numerous American journalists and celebrities, including boxer Joe Louis, who had been hired by a PR firm to encourage black Americans to visit the island. The efforts proved unsuccessful, and the Hilton's American operators struggled to keep the hotel open. Hilton International was forbidden under Cuban labor laws from firing any of the hotel's 670 employees, though the Hilton seldom had more than 100 guests. The Revolutionary government was eventually compelled to pay 2 million pesos to cover the hotel's operating expenses, and keep its employees working.
caption: New Year's day in front of the Habana Hilton, 1959.
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