Villa Excelsior

It was built in 1912 by Manuel del Busto to Manuel Menéndez de Andes. It is located in Barcellina. It is one of the most pretentious and fetishists work of the architect. 

This spectacular building was designed to be part of the residential neighborhoods of Barcellina and Villar, which is one of the most representative architecture in Asturias. The floor is 30 meters long by 20 meters width and its structure is rectangular, with three distinct irregular sections. It becomes the asymmetry of the building more pronounced. The corner of the building has a spectacular tower with a dome covered with green tiles which has a great colour and an aesthetic value.

This spectacular building was designed to be part of the residential neighborhoods of Barcellina and Villar, which is one of the most representative architecture in Asturias. The floor is 30 meters long by 20 meters width and its structure is rectangular, with three distinct irregular sections. It becomes the asymmetry of the building more pronounced. The corner of the building has a spectacular tower with a dome covered with green tiles which has a great colour and an aesthetic value.

It is noteworthy that in the construction of Villa Excelsior, and possibly also in the casino, and Villa Tarsila, which is a work of Juan Manuel de la Guardia, worked as foreman Eloy Méndez from Luarca.

 
Villa Cristina

Villa Cristina is a neo-Renaissance style house. It was built around 1889, the date that appears at the gate, possibly by JM de la Guardia, in Villar, Luarca. It was bought by Macario Fernández and Cristina Pérez soon after its construction.

The building has a square-type floor of three independent sections with a gabled roof. It has the classical hotel structure in H shape, typically French. The balance is achieved by the symmetrical distribution of the openings on the wall.

The access door inside the building is located in the center of the front formed by two adjacent columns which are derivated of the Corinthian order with scrolls and a lintel decorated with a laurel wreath thin and an oval mirror. The decor, of course with a historicist influence with mirrors, garlands, palms, roses, floral, scallop shells and scrolls, is concentrated at openings, lintels, pilasters and corbels.

It is noteworthy that the house to the servants and the garage, usually located in a marginal area of the estate, are in this house located symmetrically to both sides of the facade. It still preserves at the rear the valance under the eaves which is made with fine filigree wood. It also had one at the front but some years ago it was removed due to deterioration.

Villa Carmen

The estate known as Villa Carmen was built by the architect Juan Miguel de la Guardia in the late nineteenth century, by order of Don Ventura Olavarrieta, who was a seaman in his youth and migrant to Cuba, where he intervened in the war of that country and where he made a considerable fortune.

The property belonged to the Olavarrieta family until 1905, when José Ochoa Perez, to make a gift to his wife, agreed with the heirs of Ventura Olavarrieta to buy both the house and the land near to El Naútico, for 150,000 pesetas.

However, this year, Ochoa de Albornoz family could not settle into their new home due to delayed paperwork from the notary. Therefore they bought another house in Luarca where Severo Ochoa was born on September 24th, 1905.

The new mansion acquired was dubbed as Villa Carmen in honor of Carmen de Albornoz Liminiana, his mother.

Despite the vicissitudes of the family, the death of his father and the move to Malaga, every summer the whole family returned to their natal town, Luarca, and to Villa Carmen, where Severo Ochoa enjoyed his childhood years.

Villa Carmen is organized in a H structure, with three volumes, one in the centre with covering flat and a glass gallery of geometric design. The ceiling is decorated with paintings and two longitudinal turriform wings, terminating in gables and pitched roofs with two aspects.

Undoubtedly the most striking of the mansion is the gallery. This is a very original glass solution that lies in the racks which frames the glass plates and maintains the harmony with the beautiful valance (cut sheets of wood) placed under the eaves.

The lower and upper sections of the gallery are decorated with wooden planks which are cut and open worked as a fine filigree lace edging. On the other hand, glass racks goes away from the simple cross-linking feature in most of these glass elements, defining transparency areas with an approximately oval shape.

Villa Rosario 

The most important project of the architect Julio Galán Carvajal is the reform of an old house, Villa Rosario. It has an H shape floor, very similar to others built in the 1880s in Villar de Luarca..

The original building, possibly by Juan Miguel de la Guardia, was commissioned by the marriage of Salomé González Álvarez de Canero and Gervasio Martinez, who came from Rosario (Argentina). One of their daughters, Salomé, married to Marcelino Rivas Rico, lived in the mansion with her children Cipriano and Marcelino (Lino) Rico (the latter born in the house). After 1910 the house was sold to Ramon García for 35,000 pesetas.

Between 1915 and 1919 deals with the modernization of this home built about thirty years earlier. Galán Carvajal, the project manager, remains faithful to the H shape floor, devoting all its efforts for the improvement, adaptation and change of the image of the facade.

The dormers and tall sections of the lateral wings, only slightly developed on the central volume are configured as a frontispiece of mixtilinear profiles, as features and solutions of eclecticism. It’s clearly influenced by Viennese style on the purity of the geometry of lines and volumes.

An elegant portico emphasizes the building's facade. The top is made up by a balcony.

Galán used on the front a fashionable decorative element at the time, the tiles of delicate colours, where the shades of blue, green and yellow dominates.

 Villa Argentina

In 1899, Juan Miguel de la Guardia signed two new buildings, situated in the neighborhood of Villar by commissioning of the two brothers Manuel and Jose Garcia Fernandez, known by the nickname of Los Pachorros. The two brothers, residents of this district, were Indians who emigrated to Argentina, where they lived running their prosperous business, but highlighted by foundations and donations that they made in Luarca. Both buildings served as summer residences.

Villa Argentina will be commissioned by Manuel Garcia Fernandez, in a large estate near his native home.

It is an elegant detached house in which strongly emphasizes the facade.

It is a strong construction with corners of granite blocks, which in turn line the windows crowned by double arches. The central part of the facade, slightly highlighted, ends in a gable eaves, fringed at its centre part with a paddle, a decorative element that had been used in Villa Tarsila.

But undoubtedly, the most striking of it, is the elegant conservatory, made of cast iron, which on the first floor overlaps above the main door, which is accessed by a side staircase. This conservatory is supported by four slender columns, also made of cast iron.

The building is completed with a Gothic chapel and a garden where grow trees from America, especially palm trees.

Villa Barrera

Villa Barrera was commissioned by José García Fernández. It is a house of great originality and rarity in the constructions of Juan Miguel de la Guardia, as well as most of the buildings made to bourgeois or Indians.
If the dominant trend in this kind of buildings is the slenderness of property, in this case the horizontal shapes predominate. It is a prism-shaped broadside building. It is more akin to the proportions of the sections built in the American countries, consisting of one basement and main floor.

It is also striking in de la Guardia the combination of two classical style symmetrical facades and two more gothic style, arranged in opposite walls, announcing an unusual style of architectural eclecticism. It is also noteworthy the flat roof topped by a balustrade, more typical of the colonial world.. We do not know if the client influenced the architect to build a peculiar building.

Anecdotally, the Prince of Asturias stayed twice at this house, Don Alfonso de Borbón, son of Alfonso XIII, the last one time in September 1930.

Casa Guatemala

It was a work asked to De La Guardia for an isolated house, christened with the name of Villa Tarsila and Villa Guatemala. The first one was in honor of the Indian wife of Ramon Rodriguez, a native of the nearby town of Barcia. The second is an evidence of affection for cloths in which it reached economic prosperity.

The result is a neo-Renaissance style housing built between 1893 and 1894 as a summer house, to switch to his permanent residence in Madrid. The work was not completed until 1895. On this date was  the painted ceilings were signed. The ceilings werw designed by the famous painter Tomás García Sampedro.

The house is situated in a new area of expansion in the Barrio Nuevo, on a large plot parallel to the Negro River and located in the centre, occupying an area of 300 square meters. It comes complete with a set of auxiliary buildings, such as landlord’s house, stables and garages, forming a very interesting development by the use of different heights, wooden eaves and hexagonal turret.

The main building has four floors: a basement, two main floors and an attic.

Author: Juan Antonio Martínez Losada