Luz Wharf

Behind the glass walls, the iron framework of the old ferry station has been preserved. It was made two-tiered so that passenger flows could reach the vessels through separate exits; later, firefighters were housed inside, and docking was moved next door. Ferries now once again leave from here across the bay to Regla and Casablanca. The name Luz preserved the family surname that had been associated with this shore long before the present terminal.

After seventeen twenty, Antonio de la Luz y del Cabo bought an old tobacco mill near this waterfront. A native of Portugal, he became a Havana official and the owner of Barreiro, a sugar estate in Marimelena, on the eastern shore of the bay. Goods from there were carried to the city by water, so Antonio built wharves here for unloading.

Havana residents began calling the adjacent street and wharf by the de la Luz surname. Antonio opened a post office in the family home, and his son José Cipriano de la Luz became a member of the city council and chief administrator of the postal service in Cuba in seventeen fifty-seven. Historians dispute which man the street name commemorates: the father or the son. The wharf’s name is clearer: Luz here means the surname of the whole family. The wharf has no direct connection to the philosopher José de la Luz y Caballero, who was born several generations later.

The route Antonio chose for cargo also proved convenient for passengers. From here, it was the shortest way to cross the bay to Regla and, through it, reach Guanabacoa. When the city wall was built along the water, the builders left one of the first sea gates near the wharf. In eighteen thirty-seven, entrepreneurs opened the first regular steamboat line in the bay between Luz Wharf and Regla; vessels departed every half hour.

In nineteen oh nine, a railway company built a two-story ferry station here, with an iron framework and separate exits to the vessels. Later, firefighters occupied the building, and boarding was moved to the neighboring pier. When the terminal was restored, restorers preserved the old metal framework, enclosed it in a glass shell, and returned boarding platforms here in two thousand sixteen.

Behind the glass is the ferry crossing to Regla and Casablanca. On this shore, the de la Luz family name remains, and vessels cross the same part of the bay through which Antonio once carried goods from his sugar estate.