Our Casa Paoli
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Exterior view of the restored gallery, seen from the backyard of Casa Paoli, where public events take place.
At the end of the 1980s, we set about searching through the old and historic urban center of Ponce for a building that could be the permanent headquarters of the Centro de Investigaciones Folclóricas de Puerto Rico, Inc., and that in the future would allow us to develop meaningful programing on a small budget. Since its founding in 1976, the Center had operated in rented locations that our founder paid for from his own pocket. In 1980, our institution was registered with the State Department. In 1982, the Historic Conservation Office approved our first two proposals: an inventory and research of the Old Ponce Urban Center and an archaeological survey of the Yauco River Basin.
The inventory allowed us to provide the country with the first study of its kind, to complete our survey of the historic area of Ponce and select, for purchase and restoration, an abandoned building on Calle Mayor—today Casa Paoli.
This turned out to be the renovated birthplace of the great tenor, Antonio Paoli. It is a structure built of brick, wood, and zinc, which originally had two floors. In 1908, the second floor was demolished and, around 1911, the engineer Manuel V. Domenech rebuilt it for the local merchant, Julio M. Salicrup. The Penna-Salicrup family of Ponce—particularly Antonio Penna Salicrup and Jaime J. Yordán Conessa—facilitated the acquisition of this property.
Links
Our founder-president
Dr. Fernando Padilla Reading Room
Hear (in Spanish) our founding president, Néstor Murray-Irizarry, discuss the history and goals of the Puerto Rican Folklore Research Center, Inc., in a recorded interview.
Included below is an article (in Spanish) published in El Nuevo Día on the history and accomplishments of our president.
Tejedor de Nuestra Historia: Néstor Murray-Irizarry
El Nuevo Día, 7 de julio de 2013
Every institution dedicated to cultural research and study requires a reading room and archive. Our Center has the Dr. Fernando Padilla Lugo Archive and Reading Room, named after one of the great collaborators of our institution. The archive preserves documents and works related to the life and work of Antonio Paoli and the muralist Rafael Ríos Rey and their respective families. In addition, it preserves photographs and materials on Puerto Rican culture, in general. The Reading Room has on deposit more than a thousand books on the culture of our country as well as a majority of Ibero-American countries, including editions from Mexico, Brazil, Dominican Republic, Peru, Argentina, Paraguay, Ecuador; and some European countries such as Spain and France.
Currently, due to the 2020 earthquake and the crisis created in part by COVID-19, the archive and the reading room are closed to the public until further notice.
