House of the First Printing House in America

Brief information

In this house, a European printing press operated for the first time in the New World. From 1539, Juan Pablos printed documents here for the viceroyalty and the church; over two decades, dozens of books came out of the print shop. This is why the building is important not for its scale, but for a change in the way texts were disseminated: handwritten and oral transmission gave way to the printed page.

The site was unusual even before the print shop. The original house of 1524 stood on the edge of the grounds of the Aztec Templo Mayor. Later, the building passed to a monastery, a military order, and private owners, serving as offices and even as premises for a printing company. Today it is used by the Metropolitan Autonomous University; inside are exhibition halls, a bookstore, classrooms, and a book museum with old Mexican books.

What to notice first

It makes sense to read the house as a place where different functions did not replace one another without a trace. The intersection of Moneda and Licenciado Primo Verdad streets fixes its position in the historic center, next to the area of the ancient sanctuary. The stone snake head, found during restoration about 82 centimeters beneath the ground-floor level, shows that beneath the history of printing lies an earlier urban layer; it is possible that in the 16th and 17th centuries the building's residents even saw it.

The interior layout today also continues the theme of paper and learning. Exhibition halls, a bookstore, classrooms, and conference spaces have appeared in the house where catechisms and government documents were once printed. The book museum is important not as a separate ornament, but as an exact modern function: old books have been returned to the building where the American history of printing began.