Carmona House. La Serena - CHILE

Direccion: Av. Balmaceda 1086, La Serena

Until the nineteenth century mining boom with the discovery of the silver mine Archers in 1825, descriptions of La Serena are a poor city and sparsely populated. Private housing was poor, being the only developed constructions of hewn stone churches that were brought from the Alto de Peñuelas.

The construction of the house Carmona in 1855 is a typical product of this prosperous period when they got together with people attracted by the mining and trade, British and American woodworkers. In fact, the English master Thomas James and Don Arturo Cousino, entrust the house to buy around 1880 the family Galleguillos. In 1890 Don Gregorio is acquired by Carmona, a wealthy farmer descendant of a family in La Serena from the seventeenth century and linked to the mine Archers. The Carmona family keeps the house until 1968 in which Woodward Aurora Carmona Congregaciín the donut to the Salesian Fathers of La Serena. They are the current owners of the house which is now in subdivided income.

Carmona s house is located on the border between the new town and the traditional city for many years and coincided with the southern front entrance to La Serena, now destroyed. It is notable for the quality of the external joinery works in its main front. It is a good example of private architecture serenense the second half of the nineteenth century and forms together with other neighboring houses and the Chapel of St. John of God Hospital, a large G-value.



This house corresponds to an adobe building with walls and floor with wooden partitions. The roof truss is made of wood, the heavens are made of wood and plaster, the floors paved with marble filed in the corridors. There are two courtyards around which are distributed bodies of the house, which boasts the survival of colonial forms. Meanwhile, in the symmetrical organization of the openings, the frames of doors and windows, entablature and feels antetechos neoclassical influence. They emphasize the partitions that connect both courtyards, they are artistic and beveled glass tracery characteristic of La Serena. The tower, the one from that era that is still standing, among the most prominent of the city. It stands on the main facade (the west) and the access shaft. It consists of a since it is based and an octagonal pavilion, surrounded by a railing. High-door windows open on each side of the pavilion, a game of blame the vertical edges pilasters and eight columns support a short overhang. It is wooden and its cover keeps the original wood shingles.