Nineteenth-century housing in Xalapa: : A story from memory

Abstract

This article focuses on the study of the history of nineteenth-century housing architecture in a local context from a social approach, from the experiences of daily life told from both written and verbal narratives, which configure to the buildings as a symbolic reservoir of memories of elite family life, container of meanings and values that transcend beyond their material history. In this sense, the nineteenth-century houses located in the Historic Center of Xalapa are studied inductively, its history are underpinned by the sociocultural dynamics of the early twentieth century and is studied from the narratives of the witnesses of that time as a synthesis of relationships between materiality, social interaction and memory, which finally gives a scaffolding that favors the approach to the study of its history from a social vision.

In this sense, the nineteenth-century houses located in the Historic Center of Xalapa are studied inductively, its history are underpinned by the sociocultural dynamics of the early twentieth century and is studied from the narratives of the witnesses of that time as a synthesis of relationships between materiality, social interaction and memory, which finally gives a scaffolding that favors the approach to the study of its history from a social vision.