Cuba was the largest producer of sugar in the Caribbean in the early decades of the 20th century. The Bacardí Company, taking advantage of this, was extending its market at an unprecedented pace, influenced also positively by the World War I that made the sugar trade particularly lucrative. The new cocktails, made by Bacardí rum like the Daiquirí and the Mojito, were widely acclaimed in the USA.

When the US Congress prohibited the production, sale and consumption of alcohol in 1920, the Bacardí Company in Havana closed its bottling factory in New York, and started with the campaign, promoting Cuba as a tropical island ideal for people that want to escape from the restriction of alcohol consumption in USA. The efficient tactics of this strategy, such as the mailing of the postcards that illustrate the allure of the Havana nights with the Bacardí rum cocktails, and the encouragement of a major airline company the US customers by phrases like “to fly to Cuba and to bath in Bacardí rum”, turned out satisfactory and American tourists flocked to the bars of Havana. Additionally, the new cocktails made by Bacardí rum helped the company to be known worldwide.

With the expansion of the company, a new building worth its name that would serve as the headquarter, became necessary. The company launched a contest and invited limited number of architects, offering 1.000 pesos for the first project. The jury was made of Henri Schueg Chassin, the president of the Bacardí company, and the architects Leonardo Morales, Enrique Gil, Emilio de Soto and Pedro Martínez Inclán. The project presented by the architect Esteban Rodríguez Castells won the first prize. The architect Rafael Fernández Ruenes and the architect and engineer José Menéndez Menéndez were the other partners of Castells’ project. According the project of Castells, the proposed building had a neo-Renaissance style, but after he visited the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes in Paris in 1925, he completely changed the design to Art Deco style.

The construction began on the lot of 1.320 m2, located on the Avenida Bélgica between the San Juan de Dios and the Empedrado streets in January 1930 and completed in 300 days, in December of the same year, as it was written in the contract. The contractor company was the German Grasyma von Wunsiedel that didn’t made any concession to use the most qualified construction material and took great care to complete the building at the committed date, although the ground conditions were not so good.

When the Bacardí building was completed, it became the tallest building on the island at that time and its elegant black-and-gold decorated bar was opened to celebrities, including the Spanish royal family. Henri Schueg, the husband of Amalia, one and only daughter of Don Facundo Bacardí Massó, the founder of Bacardí y Compañía, launched a brilliant marketing campaign that lured the Americans to the new Bacardí Building in Havana. His motto “Cuba as the home of rum and Bacardí as the king of rums” worked well.

In 1960, the revolutionary government confiscated all alcoholic beverages industries in Cuba, so that all these companies with all their assets passed to the hand of the Cuban State. In the period of 2001 through 2003 the building was restored by an Italian firm. At present the building is occupied by the offices of several national and foreign companies, primarily by tour operators. Inside it still retains its original decoration, as well as the exterior of the building, both in very good conditions. The bar restaurant in the mezzanine that continued its service after the revolution, is closed currently.