As happened with the burgeoning trade, people, too, came in droves. Germans, Englishmen, Italians, Dutch, French, Spaniards from Catalunya, North Americans and other islanders from the Caribbean were met with warm welcome. Hundreds arrived, felt at home and would quickly decide to settle permanently in Puerto Plata, leaving their mark for posterity in the Victorian Houses.

While the houses were inspired by Victorian-era architecture in England and its West Indian colonies, there are clear traces of US Georgian and neoclassical European architectural styles, along with touches of Art Nouveau and Art Deco. These houses, of which no two are identical, combined multicultural influences with adaptations for the surroundings. The need to provide shelter from the intense sun while letting in the breezes, for example, resulted in homes characterized by broad, shaded verandas and balconies. Light materials superseded thicker exterior walls and continuous windows with decorative wood trimmings were an essential part of the design. The roofs of many of the residences were steep and pierced by dormers to allow for the upward flow of hot air. A Dominican architectural adaptation to the soft breezes of Puerto Plata created a new elegant style in perfect communion with the best of nature.

Because of the trade already in place with New Orleans in the United States, several of the new construction materials were imported from there, including the artistically carved wood, the decorative metalwork, some of the first doors and the vertical shutters themselves. Soon, the skilled craftsmen arriving from the West Indies would contribute the external jigsaw elements, in keeping with the esthetic tastes of the client the building master or the availability of supplies.

The combination of walls built in the traditional brick and stone patterns, along with the first industrially-made cement blocks and neoclassical elements such as stairways with decorative handrails and balustrades, enhanced the intense use of wooden walls and ornate gingerbread trimmings that mark the well-ventilated dwellings.

The colors of the Caribbean - pastel blues, light greens, yellows and pinks - are the first things that catch the eye from afar. But to observe the details of the facades of the Puerto Plata's Victorian Houses is to stop and discover the eclectic diversity of the flora of the tropics that the master woodworkers integrated as part of a distinctive, while very Caribbean, environmental syncretism.