Our History and Purpose

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Georgina Ramirez was born in Humacao, Puerto Rico in 1900. For a lot of her life she was alone and often struggled to get by while pushing her son, Jorge López Ramirez, to pursue his engineering degree at the University of Puerto Rico in Mayagüez, and later at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston. 

 

After completing his masters degree in 1939, Mr. Ramirez came back to Puerto Rico and was immediately recruited to work for then Governor Luis Muñoz Marin on establishing a new Puerto Rican economy based on a plan to industrialize the island known as “Operation Bootstrap”. Working to establish the Puerto Rico Industrial Development Company PRIDCO, Mr. Lopez Ramirez, saw opportunities to bring new manufacturing laws and building codes to the island. He was instrumental in bringing these codes that allowed for new condominiums and manufacturing buildings to be built. Inspired by the prospect of a new Puerto Rican landscape, he was able to scrap enough money to buy some land and build the site that would later become Georgina Rental Homes.

 

Originally built in 1947, the site was designed by famous architect Henry Klumb, a disciple of Frank Lloyd Wright who was a friend of the family. It was his first solo venture and one of the first privately owned condominiums on the island.

 

Mr. Ramirez always stated that he had built the building for Georgina, so that his mother could be financially independent.  She was both the first resident and the first landlord of the building. Since then, the building has housed celebrities, diplomats, and important Puerto Rican families. Among them were members of the Unanue/Casal family once president and descendants of the famed latin food brand Goya who after the war settled temporarily in San Juan.  

 

Following his father's footsteps, Georgina’s grandson Jorge López Gallardo, an engineer like his father and grandfather before him, has done extensive work on remodeling and updating the building to provide anyone willing to invest a good place for rest and work. Mr. Gallardo had learned about the history of the building and why his father made it, and decided to renovate it, not only to honor legacy, but to provide his own children a secondary source of income. 

 

A family heritage linked to Puerto Rican history.