Nicolas Arroyo

Who is Nicolas Arroyo?

Nicolás Arroyo Márquez was a Cuban architect, diplomat and minister. He was the last Cuban Ambassador to the United States in 1958 before Fidel Castro's rise to power. He had previously served in the government of Fulgencio Batista as the Minister of Public Works.

Arroyo was the third of five children born to lawyer Nicholas Arroyo, and Hortensia Marquez. He received his architecture degree from the University of Havana in 1941 and practiced in Cuba until 1959, during which time he also served as Cuba's minister of public works. In December 1942, he married fellow architect Gabriela Menendez Garcia-Beltran and formed the architectural firm "Arroyo y Menendez." Arroyo was the Cuban ambassador to the United States from 1957 to 1958. After the 1959 Cuban revolution, he settled in Washington, D.C., and established an architectural practice foused on residential and commercial projects; he also had business interests in South America and Arlington, Virginia. Arroyo was a member of the American Institute of Architects and served on the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts from 1971 to 1976.