Cas di Torto

Cas di torto is an adobe house type found on the Caribbean islands of Aruba, Bonaire and Curacao, with a name that likely comes from the Spanish casas de torta, or cake houses, a reference to its layered clay construction. The style originated on Venezuela's Paraguana Peninsula in the eighteenth century and was carried to the ABC islands by settlers from there, and it served as the predominant dwelling type from the seventeenth century to the late nineteenth, though construction of new examples fell away rapidly in the twentieth century. The walls were built from Y-shaped wooden posts spaced roughly sixty centimeters apart, with the gaps between them densely woven with branches and then sealed with torto, a mix of loam and dried grass fibers, finished with a coat of white lime, while roofs of maize stems or cactus strips gave the houses a distinctive turtle-shaped profile that kept them exceptionally cool in the local climate. By 2005 only sixty two torto houses remained on Aruba, just four of them in good condition, and the oldest surviving examples date back about one hundred fifty years.