(12 Sep 2018) The plain, one-storey stone-lined structure sat hidden, in plain sight for hundreds of years as street vendors installed their stands outside its thick old walls, but experts have now concluded the house on 25 Manzanares Street is the oldest home in Mexico City, and quite possibly in all of Mexico and North America.
How it survived is a testament not only to the experts now restoring it for use as a sort of community centre, but also to the largely poor residents who inhabited it for centuries, and the builders who adopted a savvy mix of pre-Hispanic and Spanish construction techniques.
Built between 1570 and 1600, there are a few churches in southern Mexico and a few palaces, like the House of the Montejo, in Merida -- that may be a few decades older.
But churches say little about how people lived, and the Montejo house is largely a facade whose interior has been re-done over the centuries by wealthy families.
Up until four years ago, the old, sprawling home on Manzanares was used as just about the same way it had been for 450 years: one family lived in each of the dozen rooms that opened onto a central patio.
A stone wash basin was used to store water and cleaning clothes.
The old house survived, not despite its use for centuries as a "vecindad" -- Mexico's warren-like, crowded low-income housing units, but in part because of that.
Rosa Maria Ubaldo Lopez, 79, was born in Manzanares 25, in 1938 when her mother paid 13 pesos, something like three US dollars, per month in rent for a one-room space, separated into different areas by curtains.
"That's where I was born," said Ubaldo Lopez.
Ubaldo Lopez would herself raise eight of her ten children there.
Architect Emanuel Gonzalez, who's overseeing the project, points out the thick rock skirting around the base of the walls, a pre-Hispanic building method used to protect walls from humidity, and the two-feet-thick composite walls made of stones, volcanic rock and abode, also an Aztec mix.
One thing they didn't do was change the house much: in most of the rooms, the old-wood beam roofs remained until, years later, many collapsed under unusually heavy rains.
Today, the house is getting new roofs, and the centuries old paving stones are being re-laid in the courtyard.
About four years ago, the city's low-income housing agency bought the old house, with plans to tear it down and build modern apartment for people like Ubaldo Lopez on the land.
Then researchers realised how old it was, the housing plans were abandoned, and Ubaldo Lopez lost any hope of a new apartment for herself.
While she disagrees with some details of the restoration, like covering up the ancient stone walls under a layer of protective plaster, she somehow doesn't mind the project.
"Every morning I look down and I am pleased (to see) it (the house) has life. It's not lost, it has life, even though I don't live there anymore. It pleases me to see they are giving life to it, and that it can still be of use to people."
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