JOURNAL SNEAK PEEK: Havana Rediscovered

I fell in love with Havana long before I ever had the chance to visit. In the early 1990s, I lived near “Little Havana” while attending law school at the University of Miami. I was quickly fascinated by the many local coffee counters and sandwich shops, which opened my eyes to Cuban culture.

The “Eastern Airlines” charter flight that took us from Miami to Havana, before commercial flights had been authorized.

Traveling to Cuba legally was not easy back then. While it remained on my bucket list, it didn’t come to pass until 2015. This was before Obama’s historic visit; before the Rolling Stones’ “Havana Moon” concert was broadcast internationally; and before daily flights on JetBlue began landing in Havana — Cuban travel was still a very difficult ordeal. What began with a mysterious chartered flight on an “Eastern Airlines”-branded plane quickly became the trip of a lifetime and the start of numerous “people-to-people” cultural visits with many amazing friends, old and new, over the next several years.

What was once the Cine Cosmos, a 600-seat theater in the municipality of Playa, southwest of Old Havana, had been closed for many years and was converted into a school. The photo was taken in 2016. The signage, with its whimsical typeface and orbiting dingbats, remained on the peeling facade until around 2020.

Havana is a majestic and mysterious city. To this day, there is no Google Street View, and even if you’ve seen photos, many Americans don’t quite know what to expect. Once on the ground, it doesn’t take long to get a good sense of the city. The architectural styles in Havana range from Grand Spanish Colonial to Art Deco, Mid-Century Modern, and Brutalist blocks, the latter built during the Soviet era after the 1959 revolution.

Cine Lidice in the San Miguel del Padrón neighborhood of Havana, in 2023 and again after a restoration in 2024. Although this cinema, with its fantastical mid-century neon and glorious architectural details, had been on my radar for quite some time, it was a bit of
a trip from Vedado, the modern city-center neighborhood where we usually stay. We finally found it in 2023, despite crater-sized potholes on the road that made it impossible for our car to turn. The building was being used as an art studio by some very caring community members. Together with Adolfo Nodal’s Project por Amor, Habana Light Neon, the artist Kadir Lopez, and our travel partners, we funded and completed a full facade restoration and relit the magnificent signage to the absolute delight of the entire neighborhood! The project was completed in 2024, and we returned for the first lighting!

Josh Silber is the SCA’s vice president. He lives and works in New York City as an attorney in a private litigation practice. When not in the courtroom fighting for his clients, he can be found on the road, at home, and abroad, fighting to preserve the optimism of the past, in the hope that the light will always continue to shine.

Author’s Note: Since submitting this article, political and economic conditions in Cuba have worsened considerably. The disruption of Venezuelan oil supplies, long essential to the island’s energy needs, has contributed to severe fuel shortages and widespread power outages, affecting daily life across Havana and beyond. Regardless of one’s political perspective, the human toll of the current situation is evident and deeply concerning. It is my sincere hope that, by the time this article reaches readers, some measure of stability will have returned, that the lights are back on in Havana, and that the Cuban people can look toward improved conditions and renewed opportunities, including the chance to once again welcome visitors to their extraordinary country.

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There’s more! To read the rest of this article, members are invited to log in. Not a member? We invite you to join. This article originally appeared in the SCA Journal, Spring 2026, Vol. 44, No. 1. The SCA Journal is a semi-annual publication and a member benefit of the Society for Commercial Archeology.

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