Havana, Cuba Photo - University of Havana, Cuba

In 1927, Jean-Claude Nicolas Forestier, Raul Osero, and Cesar Guerra collaborated on the eighty-step entrance fronting the University of Havana. The University was first established in San Juan de Letran before it was transferred in May 1902 to this hill in the Vedado area of Havana. After the government was taken over by Fulgencio Batista in 1952, the University became a center for anti-government protest, and Batista closed it in 1956. It was opened again in 1959 when Fiden Castro lead the successful revolution.

Carol M. Highsmith (born 1946) is a photographer, author, and publisher who has photographed all 50 of the United States, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico for 30 years. She specializes in documenting architecture, ranging from the monumental to the everyday and whimsical. Highsmith is donating her life ’s work of more than 100,000 images, copyright-free, to the Library of Congress, which established a rare one-person archive. Out of 14 million images, the Carol M. Highsmith collection is featured in the top six alongside of Mathew Brady and Dorethea Lange. Credit line: Photographs in the Carol M. Highsmith Archive, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.

Credit line: The Carol M. Highsmith Archive, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.