Urban modernization and neogothic architecture in the old town of Mexico City: the case of the Post Office Building and the Agricultural & Mortgage Bank at the turn of 20th century

This article aims to analyze the place of neo-Gothic civil architecture as a spatial and symbolic element within the process of urban modernization at the end of the 19th century in Mexico City. For this, the cases of the Post Office Building and the Agricultural and Mortgage Bank are studied. The analysis of its constructive history, of its agents involved, of the vocation of its space, as well as of the symbolism of its Gothic forms, shows that both buildings were a reflection of the modernizing urban process of Mexico City and its connections to different scales in the globality at the Turn of the Century. The article is the product of one of an exhaustive investigation without precedent on the historical documentary sources around these two buildings, the only standing examples of this type of architecture within the area declared a World Heritage Site of the Historic Downtown of Mexico City.