Casa de Fierro

The Iron House
La Casa de Fierro (Spanish)
File:Iquitos-Casa de Hierro (4).jpg The "Casa de Fierro" in Iquitos, Peru
Alternative names	La Maison de Fer (French)
General information
Type	House
Location	Iquitos, Peru
Address	streets Próspero/Putumayo
Coordinates
Current tenants	"The Café of the Amazon" (restaurant; first and second floors)
Construction started	1887 (creation in Belgium)
Completed	1889 (prefabrication state)
Inaugurated	1890 (built in Iquitos)
Owner	Judith Acosta Vda. De Fortes
Technical details
Structural system	Precompression
Design and construction
Architect	Gustave Eiffel
Awards and prizes	Cultural Heritage of Peru

La Casa de Fierro (archaism, English: the Iron House, French: La Maison de Fer), located in the city of Iquitos in the jungle of Peru, in front of the major square between Próspero and Putumayo streets, is a large iron residence built during the rubber boom at the end of the nineteenth century.

File:Iquitos-Casa de Hierro (01).JPG

Commemorative plaque mounted on the exterior wall

La Casa de Fierro is one of the finest as well as best-preserved samples of civil architecture in Peru. The walls, ceiling, and balcony are plastered in rectangular sheets of iron. It is said to be the first prefabricated house in the Americas. Although popularly said to have been designed by the French architect Gustave Eiffel, there is no evidence that this is true; the building does not reflect his architectural style. The unsubstantiated claims say it was built in the Belgian workshops of Les Forges D´Aiseau. Rubber baron Anselmo del Aguila bought it at the International Exposition of Paris in 1889. Once dismantled, it was brought in pieces to Iquitos (the metal sheets were carried by hundreds of men through the jungle), and assembled there in 1890.

Since 1985, it is being administered by the Club Social de Iquitos; which has contributed in its restoration. Its second floor now has a restaurant.

A fully different story of the origin of the house is told in Mario Vargas Llosa's Captain Pantoja and the Special Service (Pantaleón y las visitadoras), a comic novel.

See also

• Fitzcarraldo

External links

Media related to at Wikimedia Commons

• Juegos Divertidos
• Iquitos: following the route of the rubber boom
• (French) La Casa de fierro d'Iquitos (Pérou): Une oeuvre du "magicien du fer" (Gustave Eiffel) en pleine Amazonie
• (French) La Casa de Fierro d'Iquitos (Pérou): Gustave Eiffel en pleine Amazonie
• (German) Monsieur Eiffel in the Amazonian Jungle
• Iquitos Times "Any Old Iron?"
• ikitos.com A brief history of the Iron House.

• Practiguia Peru, First ed., pag. 261. Peru Guia S.R.L., Lima, 1994 (Spanish)
• [1], The New York Times, October 29, 2014.