The Public Works Advisory Board met on April 29, 1874, and the decision was made to replace the old market in the same place with the name Plaza de Tacón.

[7] With some exceptions, the shopkeepers invented new ways to attract customers, otherwise nothing remarkable happened in the Plaza de Vapor during the working hours; as the night fell, one found the animation of the city, the electric lights, the silence on the interior courtyard and the darkness.

Andrés Stanislas Romay writes about the Plaza del Vapor:"Meanwhile the animation reigns in the inner enclosure of the square, that as by charm you see transformed into a kind of fair.

If you do not want to be a philosopher, the diversity of physiognomy, costumes, conversations, will serve as a distraction, or you will contemplate with satisfaction the golden pineapple, the purple mangoes, the velvety caimito and other thousand rich fruits of the tropical fields.

No,: it is then transformed into a temple of love, of that subtle spirit that penetrates whenever man puts his mark and who does not disdain to visit the darkest shelter at the same time as the most majestic palace?

Hundreds of thousands of Chinese workers were brought in by Spanish settlers from Guangdong, Fujian, Hong Kong, and Macau via Manila, Philippines[12] starting in the mid-19th century to replace or work alongside African slaves.

The strip was a pedestrian-only street adorned with lanterns, red paper dragons and other Chinese cultural items; there were a great number of authentic Cuban-Chinese restaurants.

Another, albeit smaller wave of Chinese immigrants, also arrived during the 20th century, some as supporters of the communist cause during the Cuban revolution and others as dissidents escaping the authorities in China.

Most of these men did not marry, but Hung Hui (1975:80) cites there was a frequency of sexual activity between black women and these Asian immigrants.

In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Chinese men (Cantonese) engaged in sexual activity with black Cuban women, and from such relations many children were born.

[18] In the 1920s, an additional 30,000 Cantonese and small groups of Japanese also arrived; both immigrations were exclusively male and there was rapid intermarriage with white, black and mulato populations.

[20] In the study of genetic origin, admixture and asymmetry in maternal and paternal human lineages in Cuba, thirty-five Y-chromosome SNPs were typed in the 132 male individuals of the Cuban sample.

The Plaza de Tacón, which was subsequently known as “del Vapor”, received this last name because “Pancho” Martí, owner of the first existing restaurants located in the corner of Galiano and Dragones, placed a painting on the wall that represented the steamship “Neptune”, baptizing and connecting forever the Plaza with the name "vapor," (steam).

On the front of Reina Street, the architect, Eugenio Rayneri Sorrentino, designed a central, square, domed turret with a four dial clock, the entrance to the courtyard.

In this building, Rayneri used steel beams in the ceilings spaced 70 cm apart supporting mud slabs, which were then a novelty in Havana.

As a result, any stress induced by a load, static or dynamic, must be within the limit of the concrete's flexural strength to prevent cracking.

[33] Since unreinforced concrete is relatively very weak in tension, it is important to consider the effects of tensile stress caused by reactive soil, wind uplift, thermal expansion, and cracking.

[35] This makes them economical and easy to install for temporary or low-usage purposes such as subfloors, crawlspaces, pathways, paving, and levelling surfaces.

[32] In this application, a mud slab also prevents the plastic bar chairs from sinking into soft topsoil which can cause spalling due to incomplete coverage of the steel.

[41] Historically, a modest amount of wrought iron was refined into steel, which was used mainly to produce swords, cutlery, chisels, axes and other edged tools as well as springs and files.

Many items, before they came to be made of mild steel, were produced from wrought iron, including rivets, nails, wire, chains, rails, railway couplings, water and steam pipes, nuts, bolts, horseshoes, handrails, wagon tires, straps for timber roof trusses, and ornamental ironwork, among many other things.

[4] Carlos Rodríguez Búa writing about the nearby "El Barrio Chino" notes: "...the Plaza del Vapor occupied la manzana (the entire block) between Galiano,[7] Reina, Dragones and Águila streets and about 1824 there were established without any order and with the most petty irregularity the vendors of daily supplies for that part new of the population, so that the best of those positions were uneven wooden blocks that belonged to different owners.

No pitcher saw well that a woman could hit against him and to avoid it the ball was thrown close to her body which gave rise to many verbal fights."

In April 1947 the American businessman Max Carey came to Cuba with two baseball groups made up of women, and hired Viyaya to play in the USA.

He was responsible for the sabotage to the fuel tleft|anks of the Belot refinery in Regla, whose black smoke, for several days, showed the people of Havana that the fight against Batista was reactivated.

The distribution of the pamphlet in the country, before the amnesty of the moncadistas, in 1955, contributed decisively to forge the vanguard that would lead the armed struggle against Batista.

[6] The Plaza del Vapor met a similar fate in 1959 as the Paris food market Les Halles would meet in 1971.

[citation needed][48] At the beginning of the 1959 Revolution Fidel Castro ordered to stop all construction in Cuba, and to have the Plaza del Vapor demolished; the Ministry of Public Health declared the Plaza del Vapor unhealthy and its vendors were resettled on the grounds of Calle Amistad between Calles Estrella and Monte where the demolished Mars and Belona dance academy had operated for years.

The National Institute of Savings and Housing (INAV)[d] replaced Batista's National Lottery, which had been abolished by the Revolutionary government, and a new lottery to raise money for new construction, and directed by Pastorita Núñez who projected that a new, modern building, not unlike those that were proposed by Josep Lluís Sert a year earlier in his Havana Plan Piloto of 1955-1958 would now be built in the empty lot.

[49] The project for a new, modern, high-rise slab building to replace the Plaza del Vapor was designed by the architect Carlos Alfonso.