Museo de las Américas

The barracks the Spanish built between 1854 and 1864 — one of the last major architectural projects of colonial rule before the United States took the island in 1898 — now holds the Museo de las Américas. Founded in 1992 by Ricardo Enrique Alegría Gallardo, it carries four permanent exhibitions: The Popular Arts in the Americas, The African Heritage, The Indigenous of America, and Conquest and Colonization: Birth and Evolution of the Puerto Rican Nation. Puerto Rico acquired the building in 1976 from the federal government, restored it between 1990 and 1993, and put it to exactly the use the transfer required.