In a previous article we discussed the profile of the architect Álvaro González Saz (1883-1936) as technician of the Urban Heritage Cadastre Service of the Treasury Delegation of Toledo (1911-1936), municipal architect (1929-1931) and “second architect” of the Provincial Deputation in 1918. sphere signed also different private works until his tragic death in 1936. His production can be attributed to the “national architecture” born from the regenerationist wave after the disaster of 1998 which shunned foreign eclecticism. The Spanish Pavilion designed by Urioste for the Universal Exhibition in Paris in 1900, with Plateresque and Renaissance elements, was a model that inspired what is called the “Spanish style”. Rucabado, Bellido, Vicente Lampérez and Aníbal Álvarez are some architects who successfully defended it in the first third of the 20th century. In Toledo, González Saz adopted this trend when designing the Provincial Court of Toledo (1929) and with unequal weight in his particular works. Some copies remain (logically already retouched), others in an abandoned state and some, victims of the pickaxe, are now pure memories.
Houses, factories and a mansion
One of the first commissions in Toledo was the Mudejar facade of the building located on the Carlos V slope, on the corner of Barrio Rey street, owned by councilor Eugenio Ortiz Pedraza. The project, which we have already talked about in detail in another article (09/15/2024), was drawn up in 1915 and inaugurated in June 1916 under the name Hôtel Paris. In 1918 the hotel became Telegraphs until 1933, then successive administrative headquarters. González Saz applied to the facade a symphony of horseshoe arches and resolute brick ornaments. For this and other works, upon his entry into the Royal Academy of Fine Arts and Historical Sciences of Toledo in 1918, the academic Aragonés de la Encarnación identified him as a “classical art lover”.
For the businessman Jerome Sierra In 1918 he planned a bread factory next to the historic Taller del Moro, in the space that is today the garden of the Fuensalida Palace. First, he removed the remains of an old dairy farm and created a warehouse under a metal frame and three rotating coal kilns with their respective chimneys. The project was accepted by the Royal Academy of Fine Arts and Historical Sciences of Toledo, although the press regretted that a modern factory had been added to the Islamic artistic “hall”. Since the civil war, until around 1958, the workshop was used by the Military Administration, passing, in 1964, to the Ministry of National Education. After the demolition, the rehabilitation of the Fuensalida Palace and the Moro Workshop was undertaken.
Between 1919 and 1920 there were two housing projects in Pontezuelas (on the Camino del Valle) and on the Piedrabuena highway. Both on one level, with a gabled roof and adjoining corrals on municipal land, given for a modest annual fee, following the model generalized by other colleagues in Vega Baja, Solanilla, Paseo de la Rosa or the hills of San Anton and San Blas. More unique was a factory commissioned by the La Sagra Flour Companynext to the Pantoja-Alameda station, inaugurated in October 1921. There he articulated a long building with a central core of four floors for the machines and, on two sides, two symmetrical wings for complementary uses. A succession of semicircular arches crosses the ground floor. The exterior masonry is framed by sets of bricks with various moldings and ceramic tiles. Sébastien Aguado. Today, the complex presents a pitiful appearance after years of neglect. In 2004, a file was initiated for the declaration as an Asset of Cultural Interest of Castile-La Mancha.
Another job, around 1920, took him to the Higares estate (Mocejón), owned by the Dukes of La Vega. He designed the mansion and chapel with traditional medieval profiles, just as other wealthy families of the time built mansions in their meadows and cigar fields. In 1929, González Saz, in the service of Savings and construction bankhe planned a large house in Los Yébenes for the industrialist Cayetano Gallego and the premises necessary to serve the bus line that operated with the capital.
Houses, a barracks and a cinema
Other works also appear in central Toledo. In 1923, on a narrow plot of land belonging to the Marquis de la Torrecilla, in Belén, 10, he installed a store on the ground floor and a house spread over three levels projecting onto the sidewalk like solid watchtowers with colorful Angel tiles. Pedraza Moriz. In the same year, the complete renovation of a large property between Arco de Palacio and Nuncio Viejo took place, owned by Dolores Navarro, wife of Francisco Ledesma. The property had commercial premises with windows and two floors of housing which it fully regularized. In the elevations he used plaster and plaster in some Corinthian pilasters and in the lintels of the balconies. The light polygonal corner bay windows accentuate the packaging of the building. In 1955, the new ownership of the estate was the La Vasco-Navarra insurance company, which added an additional floor and placed the company’s coat of arms on the chamfer.
A particular work of González Saz was the renovation of the remains of the old convent of the Trinitarios descalzos, in front of the María Cristina school, owned by Mariano Alba, Commander of Military Health, to adapt it to the headquarters of the Civil Guard. For this, the armed institute had launched a competition to rent premises to house the barracks with pavilions for chiefs, officers and around sixty soldiers. In December 1925 the facility was officially inaugurated and remained there until 1936. Another unique project, signed with his colleague from the Cadastre Luis Ferrero Llusiá, was the one entrusted by the industrialist Maximino Guerrero to build, in Sinagoga Street, Modern Cinema. (1929), closed in 1973 then demolished.
Very close, Gonzalez Saz He renovated two family properties in 1932. Next to the modern cinema, on Sinagoga Street, he enlarged the lawyer’s house. Pablo Riesco Alonso to distribute three large houses on four levels. On the facade he designed a baroque molding above the door which was not realized, nor a factory gazebo which was transformed into a vertical body of metal gazebos. In Calle de la Granada, 2, with the return to Hombre Palo, he renovated the address of the lawyer José Esteban-Infantes in the premises of a pharmacy, regularizing the upper floors for housing. On the facade he used plaster ornaments and metal gazebos that combine with the property of the Navarro Ledesma family that he designed on the opposite sidewalk in 1923. We can say that this enclave brings together the latest projects of the forgotten architect. Álvaro González Saz.
