Palacio de Correos de México

Porfirio Díaz laid the first stone on 14 September 1902 and reopened the building as a post office on 17 February 1907, five years door to door. Boari designed it; the Mexican engineer Gonzalo Garita built it, floating the whole thing on a Chicago-type raft because the site is old lake bed. The result is a fantasy of Isabelline Gothic — mixtilinear arches, twisted colonnettes, florid cresting and an open arcade running along the top — cut in chiluca stone quarried at Santa María Tulpetlac and hung on an American steel frame, with the main front chamfered at the corner. Inside, the iron columns are cased in scagliola, the ceremonial stair is Mexican marble with bronze by the Fonderia Pignone of Florence, and the arcade of the third floor carries the arms of the countries then in the Universal Postal Union. The Hospital de Terceros de San Francisco of 1761 was demolished in 1900 to clear the site.