Centro Urbano Benito Juárez
The Centro Urbano Benito Juárez, also known as Multifamiliar Juárez, is a large apartment complex in the southeast part of Colonia Roma, Mexico City. Built in the late 1940s and early 1950s, it was one of several planned urban communities designed by architect Mario Pani. These centers were meant to be semi-autonomous with lots of outdoor space and easy access to parks and services. The project also featured one of the biggest mural programs of the 20th century, created by Carlos Mérida.
The land had previously housed the Estadio Nacional, a stadium and political venue where presidents Plutarco Elías Calles, Emilio Portes Gil and Lázaro Cárdenas took oaths. By the end of the 1940s the stadium was mostly abandoned, as most activities moved to the nearby Ciudad Deportiva. Pensiones Civiles, a government agency, bought the site, which sits in Colonia Roma and is bounded by Avenida Antonio M. Anza to the north, Huatabampo Street to the south, Avenida Cuauhtémoc to the east, and Jalapa Street to the west, near La Piedad park.
In the mid-20th century, the Mexican government built several “centros urbanos” or planned urban communities near a Metro station. These were designed to have their own administration, shops, recreation, schools, and health services. Mario Pani, following his earlier Centro Urbano Miguel Alemán, sought to improve on that model with Benito Juárez, aiming for low-cost housing with modern design influenced by Le Corbusier.
The complex opened on September 10, 1952 and covered about 250,000 square meters, though only 16,000 square meters of ground level actually housed buildings, leaving most of the grounds as parks and sports areas. It included 19 buildings of different heights, with 984 apartments in twelve layouts to house roughly 3,000–5,000 people. The buildings were of four types (A, B, C, D) and offered about 700,000 square feet of living space. Unlike the Alemán project, the Juárez complex placed buildings at angles to favor privacy and natural light. There were no internal vehicular roads; only Orizaba Street crossed the site, but it was lowered below ground level, one of the first such underpasses in Mexico City. Four C-type buildings were built next to this underpass to maximize space for parks. About 2,500 trees were planted, creating a very open, low-density environment.
Inside the apartments, space was maximized by placing kitchens and living rooms on one level and bedrooms on another, and access to elevators ran through open passages. A notable feature for the time was garbage chutes that carried trash to a basement.
The architectural project is famous for its integration of art and building. Mérida’s murals covered 4,000 square meters and were designed to blend with the architecture, a concept called “plastic integration.” The murals drew on Mexican mestizo imagery, mixing pre-Hispanic legends with European-looking figures. Panels on the C buildings used exterior spaces like closets pushed to the outside walls to create mural canvases. The underpass walls along Orizaba Street featured long figures designed to suit drivers’ quick glances. The taller B buildings, each with ten floors and 72 apartments, had exterior staircases decorated with Mérida murals depicting Mexican and Mayan legends, such as Texcoco, the Fifth Sun, Ixlolxóchitl, Tula, and the Popol Vuh.
The reception to Pani’s and Mérida’s work was mixed, with some critics in the contemporáneo and Mexican muralist camps questioning whether Mérida’s art and the bourgeois nature of the project fit Mexican identity. Siqueiros initially praised the idea of plastic integration but later criticized the work as inauthentic and bourgeois.
The buildings were built to be strong, and ground-level tests suggested solid foundations. However, an earthquake in 1957 damaged several structures. By the 1985 Mexico City earthquake, the complex suffered severe damage: A1, B2, and C3 partially collapsed, and many residents died. It became economically unviable to repair all the damaged buildings, and most were condemned and demolished. The rental contracts had failed to include rent-increase clauses, so by 1985 many tenants paid very low rents, contributing to neglect and maintenance problems.
As a result, most of the complex was lost, and the murals were nearly destroyed, with Mérida’s completed work surviving only in photographs and Mérida’s sketches donated to UNAM. A student of Mérida used some designs to create a monument at another complex called Fuentes Brotantes.
Today, only a few original buildings remain. The site still appears in the Cuauhtémoc borough’s records as a separate neighborhood, but the area has fallen into decline, with parking shortages, crowded streets, abandoned units and crime. Much of the land where the destroyed buildings stood remains undeveloped.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 03:50 (CET).