How Color and Joy Saved Old San Juan

Impossible to imagine it any other way.

Founded in 1866, Sherwin-Williams was the first paint company in the U.S. to open its doors with ready-made paint. Until then, there was a black market for paint colors. The high cost of house paint, coupled with a strong desire to have a painted house, sparked American ingenuity and encouraged homegrown enterprises to come up with their own version of paint ingredients. Paint cookbooks circulated around. Sherwin-Williams stepped in with ready-mixed paint and a guarantee.

Colorful homes were a sinful expression of vanity and excess happiness back in the day, according to Pilgrims — the same people who tried to outlaw Christmas trees — who outlawed the use of color in homes entirely. As the colonies grew and prospered, paint became a status symbol. Something only a few could afford, and only the brave would flaunt.

I'm happy to report that none of those Pilgrims ever made it to Puerto Rico — where Mother Nature's palette, and all of its glorious vanity, along with the joy that comes from experiencing it, has always been expressed through color.

Puerto Rico never got that memo. Like a birthright, nobody felt the least bit guilty about it.

Old San Juan was founded in 1521 — the second oldest city in the Western Hemisphere. Originally its buildings were shades of white, a mix of sand and limestone and coquina, a rock literally made from compressed seashells and coral harvested from the Caribbean sea floor. Not unlike Santorini. Dense, sun-bleached, beautiful in its blankness.

By the 1940s it had gone from white to forgotten. Dilapidated, dangerous, riddled with crime. Politicians wanted to bulldoze the old buildings and make room for modern ones.

Two men said no.

Ricardo Alegría was an anthropologist with deep Puerto Rican roots. He worked with authorities to preserve the beautiful colonial architecture — combing through old blueprints and archives to find the original pastel tones when everyone around him wanted something louder or wanted nothing at all. Alegría means joy in Spanish. Apparently a name that would have driven Pilgrims crazy.

Beside him worked a man by the last name of Blanco.

Blanco means White.

The poetry of it is almost too perfect — a man named White was one of the people most responsible for returning color to the island. A rainbow with a mission. Inclusive, collaborative, for the greater good.

Today, because of this color transformation, Old San Juan is a UNESCO World Heritage Site — alongside the Statue of Liberty and the Grand Canyon. I like to think that somehow, Alegría's spirit lived through me without my awareness and infused my paint colors with transformative joy in people's lives. I also believe Blanco had something to do with it — a perfect metaphor for everything I believe color can do.

I believe that like Blanco and Alegría, I created cookbooks that changed how people lived with paint color. I flew to Cleveland three times during our Sherwin-Williams negotiation to buy my Devine Color brand, along with my cookbooks. The last time I was there, I walked through their museum — a timeline highlighting the historical rise of Sherwin-Williams and the evolution of its products, packaging, and memorabilia. And there, at the end of their timeline, was Devine Color. I felt I was part of a timeline that was meant to be. But the market crashed, and we sold the brand to Valspar Paint instead.

CB Powder Seashell Matte Finish starts where Puerto Rico started — in the seashell, in the limestone, in the salt. It ends where Alegría and Blanco left it: restored, radiant, and impossible to imagine any other way.

Please go on!
That Paint Went On Like Yogurt →
A Seashell Named Ramon →

If this sparked something — I'd love to hear about it. Share your story in the comments, tag us with #ColorBaggage, or write to frontdesk@colorbaggage.com.

From my bag to yours,
G