Doña Ana Lansós, a wealthy widow, petitioned King Philip IV of Spain for permission to build a Carmelite convent on her own property in Old San Juan, and construction began in 1646 after years of delay caused by the city’s fortification work absorbing all the available building materials. The finished monastery, the first Carmelite convent in the Americas, featured three-foot-thick walls and mahogany doors built by colonial Spanish soldiers, and Doña Ana served as its first mother superior.
Nuns lived and worshipped there for 252 years, surviving wars and hurricanes, until costly repairs forced the Archbishop of San Juan to close it in 1903. The building cycled through use as a retail store, dance hall, and flophouse before falling into serious disrepair. Entrepreneur Robert Woolworth bought it in 1959 and restored it, reopening as Hotel El Convento in 1962. Cellist Pablo Casals once performed in its courtyard.