NEW YORK, NY.- Havana Revisited: An Architectural Heritage, has just been released by W. W. Norton. In it, artist and photographer Cathryn Griffith examines Havana’s most important buildings and public spaces by juxtaposing old tourist post cards with her recent photographs. She explores how the most important city in Spanish colonial America developed and changed over several centuries, as well as the important role restoration plays in the city today.

This lavishly illustrated book, with a foreword by Eusebio Leal Spengler, beautifully documents the history, preservation, and present uses of Havana’s most important buildings and urban spaces.

Events coinciding with the book’s release are taking place in Boston, Miami and New York. An exhibition from Havana Revisited is available for universities, galleries and museums. To learn more, please visit www.havanarevisited.com.

Provokes Exploration of the Ways We Look at All Cities
In Havana Revisited, eleven renowned architects, historians, scholars, preservationists, and urban planners in Cuba and the United States provide a rigorous examination of Havana old and new that provokes exploration of the ways we look at all cities. These authoritative policy makers and thinkers raise issues of how the most important city in Spanish colonial America developed and changed over several centuries and the extent to which it is being restored and preserved today.

“We've all seen images of Havana's ragged children and neglected buildings,” said Cathryn Griffith. “But there's another Havana that we don't often see: a city filled with restored historic buildings and tree-shaded parks. Through photographs and text, Havana Revisited: An Architectural Heritage, reveals the glories of the city's rich cultural heritage.”

More than 350 illustrations juxtapose historical colored postcard images of Havana with recent digital color photographs of the same views. The imagery, based on years of exhaustive research and investigation, draws from Cathryn Griffith’s collection of more than 600 postcards of Havana from 1900 to 1930, over 3,000 photographs made there during multiple trips since April 2003, and extensive interviews with a broad range of outstanding scholars and historians in both Cuba and the United States.

Cathryn Griffith
Cathryn Griffith, a graduate of Wellesley College and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, lives in Boston, Massachusetts, where she develops and manages industrial real estate.

A student of French culture and language, Griffith has written and lectured about the Musée d’Orsay and has also photographed in France, China, Tibet, along the Silk Road, and in New England. Raised near Erie, Pennsylvania, on land that had been planted by her great-grandparents, she has seen the houses of her family and forebears demolished and gained a deep respect for the history embodied in architecture.

LIST PRICE: US $49.95 FORMAT: Hardcover, 10 × 10 in / 240 pages ISBN 978-0-393-73284-9