The piece of the month of September 2015

NEMESIA ENEA, BY JULIÁN ARTEAGA (1899)

José Javier Azanza López
Chair of Navarrese Heritage and Art
 

In its issue 322 corresponding to August 8, 1908, the illustrated magazine La Avalancha, belonging to the Library Services Católico-Propagandista of Pamplona, published a photograph of the Ensanche of Pamplona taken by Aquilino García Deán, an enthusiastic partner of the magazine in whose pages appeared hundreds of photographs taken in different places of Navarra from the last years of the 19th century until the beginning of the 1940s, before retiring to his residency program of Huarte-Araquil. The snapshot showed the social building of La Actividad and the villa Nemesia Enea, and conformed to the constants that characterized the photographic production of Aquilino García Deán, such as exceptional technical rigor, the result of an effort of reflection prior to each shot, and the presence -totally conscious and voluntary on both sides- of characters, a circumstance that contributes to humanize architecture and city and to endow them with scale and proportion.

General view of the Ensanche, 1908. Aquilino García Deán.
(file Municipal de Pamplona).
Photograph published in La Avalancha, nº 322, August 8, 1908, p. 179.

On lot number 10 of block B of the Ensanche, the architect Manuel Martínez de Ubago built in 1897 a single-storey house that gave way in 1902 to the definitive building in accordance with the reform carried out by the same architect at the initiative of La Actividad, a limited company founded in Pamplona on October 19, 1899 specializing in children's insurance policies, life insurance at deadline and life annuities. The building, with facades facing José Alonso and Padre Moret Streets and crowned by an artistic tower with a truncated pyramid-shaped top visible above the surrounding buildings (a relatively frequent element in the eclectic architecture of the time), housed the management and central offices.

Next to the previous one, separated by the vial of José Alonso, was the chalet erected on the 423 square meters that occupied the lot nº 8 of the block C of the Ensanche, whose sale produced to the municipality the amount of 19,040 pesetas. It was owned by the mayor of Pamplona, Joaquín Viñas Larrondo, who baptized it as Nemesia Enea in homage to his first wife Nemesia Peña, who died just two years after the construction of the building, on July 27, 1901, at the age of thirty.

Joaquín Viñas Larrondo (Pamplona, 1868-Madrid, 1937) was the youngest son of the tailor Joaquín Viñas Fernández (Pontevedra, 1828-Pamplona, 1904) and the Pamplona-born Julia Larrondo. He followed his father's profession, dedicating himself to commerce and the textile industry, and enjoyed a comfortable position. Mayor and councilman of the City Council of Pamplona during the first two decades of the 20th century, he was one of the most prominent liberals of the city and of all Navarre, maintaining excellent relations with politicians of the stature of Manuel García Prieto, the Count of Romanones and José Canalejas, the latter being the godfather of his second marriage on November 25, 1910 with Josefina Barth. His mandates at the head of the Pamplona consistory were characterized by secularism and by his concern for the hygienic and sanitary conditions of the city, which he provided with various services. No less important was his facet as a promoter and businessman, obtaining during the First World War the supply of uniforms to the French army, thanks to which he consolidated the family business.

The plans for the mansion were signed on August 23, 1899 by the municipal architect Julián Arteaga, graduate in 1872 together with Florencio Ansoleaga at the Special School of Architecture in Madrid, and displayed a set of floors, facades and a section with details of great interest. The building sample has an irregular trapezoidal layout, and develops in elevations leave, main and second floors with identical interior layout, and upper deck. On the outside, it is organized from two facades facing José Alonso and Padre Moret streets, the latter becoming its main entrance , open to a garden bounded by a metal fence on a plinth; to these is added a rear facade facing a rear courtyard. subject In accordance with point five of the conditions of sale of the plots, drafted by Arteaga himself and which addressed both administrative and urban and architectural issues, all of them incorporate an ashlar plinth up to a height of one meter.

project for the construction of a private house in the lot issue 8 of block C of the Ensanche.
Owner DN Joaquín Viñas y Larrondo. Pamplona, August 23, 1899. Julián Arteaga.
file Municipal of Pamplona. Works Section. Leg. 37, 1899, doc. nº 33.
 

Analyzing the facades that appear in Julián Arteaga's project , the main one, facing the garden and Padre Moret street, incorporated an access door with two steps on its lower level, and was flanked by two windows on each side, all of them with lowered arches and with an upper frame, elements common to the door. The main floor developed an original solution in the form of a glazed gallery characteristic of the architecture of the time, opened by semicircular arches that ran almost its entire length. Finally, on the second floor, which adopts a French-influenced mansard layout, the gallery was replaced by a continuous balcony with five openings on axis with those of the floor leave, also with segmental arches but with a greater ornamental load in the form of framing moldings and curved finials.
 

Detail of the facade facing the garden and Padre Moret street.
file Municipal of Pamplona. Works Section. Leg. 37, 1899, doc. no. 33.
 

The facade facing the street José Alonso follows the same outline as the previous one in terms of the distribution in three levels, the first with an access door framed by two windows, and the other two with two balconies in which there are three openings, those of the main floor simpler, and the attic level with the decorative load of the main facade. Finally, the facade facing the rear courtyard is more sober in its first two levels with windows and balconies with lowered arches, and only the upper one corresponding to the mansard roof is in harmony with the previous ones. 

Detail of the facade facing José Alonso street.
file Municipal of Pamplona. Works Section. Leg. 37, 1899, doc. nº 33.

 

The building acquires plenary session of the Executive Council sense when we analyze its section and its interior distribution. First of all, we can see that Joaquín Viñas Larrondo's chalet has a double function, since in addition to housing on the main and second floors, the leave floor is dedicated to storeroom, which justifies the double access through the facades of Padre Moret and José Alonso. Thus, the Padre Moret door leads to a small entrance hall from which a staircase leads to the upper levels through five zigzagging flights of six steps; at no time does this staircase communicate with the floor leave, and therefore respects the residential purpose of the building. On the contrary, the door of José Alonso becomes the direct access to the storeroom to which the entire floor leave is destined and whose presence obeys the textile facet of its owner, since it was used to store goods. It is a large area with a height of 4.20 meters, whose roof is supported by five fine iron columns.

On the floor leave dedicated to storeroom, the main and second floors are built, with identical distribution in both cases, which leads us to conclude that they were two independent floors, for the use of two families, although the height varies: 3.30 meters on the main floor, and 2.30 meters on the second floor. In its interior organization we can see how the more spacious rooms, such as the cabinets with their bedrooms, are oriented towards the Padre Moret façade, as is the dining room, arranged at an angle with José Alonso and with more light entrance thanks to the opening of an opening on each façade. The dining room is followed by a cabinet and a conference room, also spacious and illuminated, and on the rear façade are the kitchen and pantry, the bathroom and toilet, and two smaller bedrooms.
 

Detail of the interior distribution of the main and second floors.
file Municipal of Pamplona. Works Section. Leg. 37, 1899, doc. no. 33.
 

Up to this point the analysis of the plans by Julián Arteaga. The photograph by Aquilino García Deán sample shows slight variations in the final execution, such as the greater width of the openings on the main façade leave , the different arrangement of the glazed gallery, or the different design of the top of the openings on the attic floor, which takes on a pointed shape instead of a curved one. At the same time, we can see that the interior side façade, which was not developed in the architect's designs, assumes the same formal approach as the others. The photograph also allows us to see the iron gate with its stone plinth and its door between pillars, and the decorative upper lead cresting that crowns the roof, an element of French influence that reaffirms the bourgeois character of the building and that, in addition to its ornamental function, acts as a transition between the architectural volume and the surrounding exterior space.

As happened with so many other buildings in Pamplona's Ensanche, Nemesia Enea was demolished at an undetermined date in the second half of the 20th century, thus losing a magnificent example of the architectural eclecticism of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The memory remained only, in a photograph taken in 2013, in the iron gate with its stone plinth and the gate framed by pillars that gave access to the garden and main façade of Padre Moret.

Plot of land where Nemesia Enea was built. February 2013

bibliography
-AZANZA LÓPEZ, J. J., "Contribución gráfica de la revista La Avalancha a la arquitectura y urbanismo de su época (1895-1950)", Cuadernos de la Chair de Patrimonio y Arte Navarro, nº 6, 2011, pp. 9-58.
-GARCÍA-SANZ MARCOTEGUI, A. Las elecciones municipales de Pamplona en la Restauración (1891-1923), Pamplona, Gobierno de Navarra, 1990, pp. 164-166.
-ORBE SIVATTE, A. Arquitectura y urbanismo en Pamplona a finales del siglo XIX y comienzos del XX, Pamplona, Gobierno de Navarra, 1985, pp. 94-95.
-Pamplona. Edificio Social de La Actividad y villa Nemesia-enea, en el Ensanche de Pamplona, La Avalancha, nº 322, 8-VIII-1908, pp. 179-180.