Porfio_Rubirosa said:
I really lament Avenida Duarte. No, not because it's incredibly seedy. Rather, all previous attempts to develop it have ignored its history.
As recently as the late 1980s, La Duarte was still lined by small art deco stores and theaters. Apparently, La Duarte was developed commercially during the 20s-40s. True, these buildings were in such a state of disrepair that you couldn't tell they were deco. Still, they could be saved.
Now they are almost all gone. Any redevelopment would have to be from scratch - a la Avenida Mexico. Avenida Mexico is not bad, but it ain't deco!
La Duarte was the heart of the Santo Domingo of Trujillo's time. In fact, most of the art deco buildings in SDQ were built by Trujillo or one of his family members. Trujillo had a sort of affection for such type of architecture and who can blame him.
Afterall, Trujillo did visited South Florida in a few ocassions, maybe that's where he developed a sense of art deco "love".
In Trujillo's time, it was either Art Deco, Grand Baroque and Renaissance (ie. Palacio Nacional), or traditional Caribbean (ie. the many gingerbread wooden homes across the country that are painted in a multitude of colors).
If only Trujillo would have been slightly less dictatorial, he would have been the perfect leader of this country. Everything Trujillo did actually benefited Dominican society, except his strict laws and monopolistic habits. Other than that, this country was on cloud nine...
Coming back to the Duarte, I really hope any re-development attempts would include some post-modern architecture to replace the bland structures facades and for the few art deco that survive, restoring them would surely be nice. Also, prohibiting large comercial signs, repaving the road and the sidewalks, putting fancy street light fixtures and lining the street with date palm trees with every other tree being a flowering tree and such avenue could become the pride of this city, maybe even rivalling the Malecon. Then again, there is nothing better than the sea breeze that blows off the Malecon.
I really hope any redevelopment is done with some beatification process in mind and with the purpose of salvaging what can be salvaged and fixing what has gone bad to make the appearance of the city much more pleasant and beautiful.