Public-health physicians and politicians typically blamed both the poor themselves and their ramshackle tenement houses (conventillos) for the spread of the dreaded disease.
The first floor housed retail shops, while the upper floors were operated as a tenement house, boarding house, and hotel until they were extensively damaged by fire in 1946.
However, it is the water, footbridges, historic red-brick tenement houses reflected in the rivers, and the greenery, including old chestnut trees, that create the unique atmosphere of the island.