What Cuba Looked Like the Last Time a President Visited

  • Cuban girls banding the Havana cigar, after which they are boxed. Havana, Cuba, 1920.
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  • Panorama showing train loaded with sugar leaving for N.Y., sugar mill, administration buildings and sugar cane plantation. Guantanamo, Cuba, 1920.
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  • A cigar-factory employee with a large Havana Cigar. 1920.
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  • Miss Lillian Molton, daughter of Cuba's tobacco king and judged the most beautiful girl in Havana, 1922.
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  • Portrait of a typical Cuban peasant family. Cuba, 1921.
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  • The U.S. military camping at Deer Point in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. 1923.
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  • A peddler's cart in Havana, Cuba, 1925.
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  • Hordes of people and motor cars crowd the waterfront as the Cunard liner Mauretania pulls into Havana, Cuba. 1925.
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  • Havana, Cuba, 1926.
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  • U.S. Fleet in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, 1927.
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  • A Spanish Baroque-style church with the columns of an arcade in the foreground in Havana, Cuba. 1928.
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  • A view of Central Park in Havana, Cuba. 1928.
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  • View of the veranda of the clubhouse at Oriental Park, Havana, during the December Holiday season. 1929.
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  • The bathing beach in Havana, Cuba, 1929.
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  • The Presidential Palace in Havana, Cuba, 1929.
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By Lily Rothman and Liz Ronk

President Barack Obama’s official visit to Cuba this week is the first such trip in nearly 90 years. The last–and only–time a sitting U.S. President visited Cuba was Calvin Coolidge in 1928:

U.S. President Calvin Coolidge, second from left, and his wife, first lady Grace Coolidge, third from left, are shown with the President of Cuba General Gerardo Machado y Morales, right, and his wife, Elvira Machado, left, on the estate of President Machado in Havana, Cuba, Jan. 19, 1928. (AP Photo)
U.S. President Calvin Coolidge, second from left, and his wife, first lady Grace Coolidge, third from left, are shown with the President of Cuba General Gerardo Machado y Morales, right, and his wife, Elvira Machado, left, on the estate of President Machado in Havana, Cuba, Jan. 19, 1928.
AP Photo

The Cuba Obama’s visiting has a reputation as a place frozen in time, but that’s not really true. Just look at these images from Cuba in the 1920s.

Read more about Coolidge’s visit here: The Only Other Time a Sitting President Visited Cuba

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Write to Lily Rothman at lily.rothman@time.com.

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