Look for the tall, reddish-coral corner building featuring white vertical pilasters and a distinct, rounded tower rising above the roofline.
Isn’t that color just incredible? You are standing before the Herdocia Building, a true vertical experiment in a city that used to hug the ground. This corner is where an architect named Luis Llach decided to reach for the clouds.
Now, Luis Llach was a Catalan architect who left a massive fingerprint on this city, but usually... he played it safe with height. Most of his designs were grounded, sensible, two-story affairs. But here? In 1945? He decided to break his own rules. This was his personal skyscraper. It is the only building Llach ever designed that dared to go above two floors, rising to four stories of concrete and brick.
Just look at that facade. It is a conversation between two very different worlds. You have the strict, orderly columns of the Neoclassical style-those vertical white pillars that look like they belong on a Greek temple. But then, look closer at the details. See the windows? The spirals, or helicoides, flanking them? The tail-end of the stair railings inside? That is pure Art Deco... playful, geometric, and modern.
But a building is just a shell without the people who dream it up. While Llach was pouring concrete here in San Jose, the owner, Carmen Herdocia Rojas, wasn't even in the country. She was living a life of absolute cosmopolitan glamour. First as a student in London, then living in the exclusive Lomas de Chapultepec neighborhood in Mexico City, working as a cultural diplomat.
There is a fascinating, hidden layer to her story too. In the 1950s, an obituary revealed she was the daughter of José Chang Winting, a respected member of the Chinese-Costa Rican community. It shows just how deep the multicultural roots of this city run, even behind these European-style facades.
Because Carmen was so worldly, she allowed something revolutionary to happen on that fourth floor. In the 1940s, commerce in San Jose happened on the street. You didn't go up for coffee. But here, they opened a "cafetín," a small coffee shop right at the top. Imagine walking up that spiral staircase, leaving the dust and noise of the street behind, and sipping coffee in the tower, looking out over the rooftops. It was an elevated sanctuary... a place to be above the fray.
And believe me, there was plenty of "fray" down below. Just three years after this opened, in 1948, the country was torn apart by Civil War. Right next door, in house number 217, the newly formed Supreme Electoral Tribunal set up its offices. This very corner became the nerve center for rebuilding Costa Rican democracy.
History, however, is a rollercoaster. By 2012, this jewel had fallen on hard times. It had become what locals call "tugurizado"-essentially turned into a tenement slum. A private investment group bought it, pouring in ninety million colones to restore it. They had dreams of luxury boutiques and a gourmet rooftop restaurant to bring back the glamour of Carmen’s old cafetín. They even evicted the struggling tenants to make way for this high-end vision.
But cities are stubborn things. While the facade you see is pristine and restored, the upper floors have struggled to find that new life, often sitting empty. It remains a beautiful, waiting stage, caught between its history as a sanctuary for the elite and the chaotic, democratic reality of the street below.
Let’s keep moving. We are going to walk just a few steps to the massive beige building right next door. It is the Costa Rica Post and Telegraph Building... and believe it or not, it is another masterpiece by our friend Luis Llach.
