The location of a residence in Havana gives no special idea of the wealth or the social standing of those who occupy it.  Not a few well-to-do people still live in the old city, where the streets are narrow and where business is trying to crowd out everything except itself.  The home in that quarter may be in a block in which a number of buildings are residences, or it may stand with a warehouse on one side and a workshop on the other.  A few people, of unquestionable social position still live in buildings in which the street floor is a store or an office.  There is nothing curious about this.  In many American cities, old families have clung to old homes, and not a few new families have, from one reason or another, occupied similar quarters.  Such a residence may not conform to modern social ideas and standards, but there are Americans in this country, as well as Cubans and Spaniards in Havana, who can afford to ignore those standards.  The same is true of many who live in the newer city, outside the old walls.  There as here, business encroaches on many streets formerly strictly residential.  This holds in the newer part of the city as well as in the old part.  A number of streets there are, for a part of their length, quite given over to business.  Even the Prado itself is the victim of commercial invasion.  What was once one of the finest residences in the city, the old Aldama place fronting on the Campo de Marte, is now a cigar factory.  A little beyond it is the Tacon market, occupying an entire block.  Stores and shops surround it.  The old avenue leading to the once fashionable Cerro, and to the only less fashionable Jesus del Monte, is now a business street.  Another business street leads out of the Parque Central, alongside the former Tacon theatre.  The broad Calzada de Galiano, once a fashionable residence street, is now largely commercial.  While less picturesque than some parts of the old city within the walls, the most attractive part of Havana is undoubtedly the section of El Vedado, the westward extension along the shore.  Here are broad streets, trees, gardens, and many beautiful and costly dwellings.  This is really the modern Havana.  A part of it is only a little above sea-level, and behind that strip is a hill.  A few years ago, only a small number of houses were on the hillside or the hilltop.  Now, it is well built over with modern houses.  The architectural type is generally retained, and it is rather a pity that there should be even what variation there is.  El Vedado is the region of the wealthy and the well-to-do, with a large percentage of foreigners.  It has its social ways, very much as other places have, in this country, in France, Hong Kong, or Honolulu.  They are not quite our ways, but they are a result of conditions, just as ours are.