The oldest European structure in Casablanca was an abandoned prison allegedly built by the Portuguese, arcades of which now decorate the
Arab League Park. The
Church of San Buenaventura (now the
Buenaventura Cultural Center) was built in the medina by the Spanish community of Casablanca in 1890.
French Protectorate Throughout the decades of the
French Protectorate (1912–1956), the urban development of Casablanca was "first and foremost driven by [French] economic interests." The city was designed with automotive traffic and eventual industrial complexes—such as the port and railroad lines—in mind. Lyautey's urban strategy in Morocco, shaped by a pragmatist regard toward colonized populations gained through his military experience in
Indochina and
Madagascar, was to construct and to leave virtually untouched, even to subject them to a kind of Orientalist preservation.|alt=|left Casablanca became a laboratory for the principles of , including a trenchant division and complete disassociation between the
medina and the . For the colonial administration, the Moroccan medina was at once a breeding ground of disease to be contained, an antiquity of the past with Oriental charm to be preserved, and a refuge for would-be insurgents to be squelched. The main streets radiated southeast from the port, the medina, and the
Souq Kbir (
grand market) which became and is now
United Nations Square. This square linked the medina, the
mellah, and the .
Hippolyte Joseph Delaporte designed the first two major buildings to mark the square: the
Paris-Maroc stores (1914) and the
Hotel Excelsior (1918). and
Claude Farrère said of the latter that "meetings of stock exchange, finance, and commerce took place exclusively in the four cafés surrounding it." The
Central Market (1917) by
Pierre Bousquet was built at the site of the
Casablanca Fair of 1915. In 1917, Casablanca became the second city in the world, after New York's
1916 Zoning Resolution, to adopt a comprehensive urban plan. File:Georges Buan, plan showing the subdivisions of Casablanca, in Léon Guigues, "Guide de l'Exposition Franco-Marocaine" (Casablanca 1915).jpg|Georges Buan's plan appearing in the guide for the
Casablanca Fair of 1915 File:Henri Prost, preliminary layout of roads 1917.jpg|Prost's road plan for his 1917 extension and development plan File:Henri Prost, Development and extension plan of 1917.jpg|A map of the development and extension plan published in
France-Maroc.
Hubous In 1916, four years after the official establishment of the
French protectorate, Prost and
Albert Laprade designed a —now known as the
Hubous—a new
medina near the sultan's palace to the east of the new center.
Bousbir '', a
Yoshiwara-inspired colonial brothel district.
Albert Laprade first set up a rectangular area with an orthogonal street layout, while and
Edmond Brion manipulated traditional Moroccan forms employed in the Hubous. It was a walled-off enclosure containing 175 residences, 8 cafés, and a dispensary, with regulated movement uniquely through a guarded gate. Up to 700 women—Muslims and Jews—lived in this veritable "prison." The colonists marketed the to tourists with
Orientalist imagery until it was shut down in 1954. == Art Nouveau, Art Deco, and Neo-Moorish ==