The Edificio Ermita is one of Mexico City’s finest Art Deco buildings, a curved, commanding structure at the entrance to Tacubaya that most people pass without recognizing what they’re looking at. Built in 1931, it’s a mixed-use building that combines apartments, commercial spaces, and a former cinema, all wrapped in the geometric elegance that made Art Deco the defining architectural style of its era. If you have any affection for early 20th-century architecture, this building is worth a detour.
The Building
The Ermita was designed by Mexican architect Juan Segura and completed in 1931, making it one of the earliest purpose-built Art Deco structures in the city. Its most striking feature is the curved facade that follows the angle of the street corner, creating a sweeping arc of windows and geometric ornamentation that looks like the prow of an ocean liner. The comparison isn’t accidental — Art Deco architecture frequently borrowed the streamlined aesthetics of modern transportation, and the Ermita leans into that influence hard.
The exterior decorative elements are worth studying up close. Geometric reliefs, stylized floral motifs, and the characteristic vertical lines of the Deco style cover the facade. The detailing is intricate without being fussy — it has the confidence of a style that knew exactly what it was doing. The building rises several stories, and the proportions work beautifully, giving it a presence that dominates its corner of Tacubaya.
The Cinema
The building originally included a cinema, the Cine Ermita, which operated for decades as a neighborhood movie theater. The theater’s interior was decorated in the same Art Deco style as the exterior, with geometric patterns and period fixtures that made going to the movies here a more elegant experience than the multiplex would ever be.
The cinema closed in the 1990s, a victim of the same shift toward multiplexes and declining neighborhood theaters that killed Art Deco cinemas worldwide. The space has been through various incarnations since, but the basic shell of the original theater survives. Efforts to preserve and reactivate the space have been ongoing, with varying degrees of success.
Art Deco in Mexico City
Mexico City has one of the richest collections of Art Deco architecture in the Americas, and the Edificio Ermita is a top-tier example. The style arrived in Mexico in the late 1920s and flourished through the 1930s, coinciding with a period of rapid urbanization and modernization. Mexican architects didn’t just copy European or American Deco — they adapted it, incorporating pre-Columbian motifs, tropical vegetation, and Mexican materials into the international style.
The Ermita is one of several outstanding Deco buildings scattered across the city. Others include the Palacio de Bellas Artes interior, the Monumento a la Revolucion, the Edificio Basurto in Condesa, and numerous apartment buildings in Roma, Condesa, and Hipodromo. For anyone interested in the style, Mexico City offers an embarrassment of riches, and the Ermita is one of the essential stops.
Visiting
The Edificio Ermita is at the junction of Avenida Revolucion and Avenida Jalisco in Tacubaya. The exterior is visible and photographable at any time — it’s a street-facing building on a busy corner. The interior spaces are harder to access, as the building is still in active use as apartments and commercial space. The former cinema area may or may not be open depending on what’s currently happening with it.
Metro Tacubaya (Lines 1, 7, and 9) is steps away, making this one of the most accessible Art Deco landmarks in the city. If you’re passing through Tacubaya for any reason, it takes five minutes to walk to the building and admire the facade.
The surrounding area isn’t a prime tourist zone, but Tacubaya has some interesting corners. The nearby Casa de la Bola (a peculiar mansion-museum) and the Parque Lira area are worth combining with an Ermita visit if you’re in the neighborhood. For a Deco-focused itinerary, you could start at the Ermita, head to Condesa to see the Edificio Basurto and other Deco apartment buildings, and finish at the Monumento a la Revolucion — a full morning of some of the best Deco architecture in the Americas.