Ponce Historic District

The fire-control edict came first. In 1893, the colonial governor of Puerto Rico mandated that any structure within fifty meters of a town's central square had to be built of stone — a rule meant to stop fires, which instead froze Ponce's downtown in dressed masonry and gave it an architectural coherence that outlasted the Spanish Empire itself. Formally designated a historic zone in 1962, the district anchors itself at Plaza Las Delicias, where the Parque de Bombas firehouse and the Cathedral of Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe face each other across a square that the city has been arguing about, preserving, and arguing about again ever since.