Casa Ruiz de Velasco, Art Nouveau revenue house in Madrid, Spain

Casa Ruiz de Velasco is a Modernista building at Calle Mayor 5 in Madrid, with a facade onto Calle de Postas. Its main front has two vertical lines of masonry bay windows at the ends, joined below by a continuous balcony and above by a cornice with pinnacles; between them are central balconies. Wavy Art Nouveau ornament with intertwined flowers and stems runs across corbels, balustrades, cornices, balconies and bay windows, and the entrance arch is topped by a caduceus.

The building was constructed in 1906 when textile entrepreneurs Bonifacio and Pablo Ruiz de Velasco commissioned architects José López Sallaberry and Francisco Andrés Octavio Palacios to design it. It emerged during a period when this style was gaining importance in Madrid and merchants were creating buildings that displayed their commercial success.

The entrance portal displays a Mercury symbol representing the god of commerce, marking the building's origins as a textile business. This emblem reflects how the structure was shaped by its commercial purpose from the start.

The building sits on an irregularly shaped plot in central Madrid, meaning its architecture is adapted to the constraints of the location. Visitors can view it from Calle Mayor and Calle Postas, making it easily accessible from multiple perspectives.

The plot's irregular shape forced José López Sallaberry to use four structural bays: two facing Calle Mayor, one on Calle Postas and a triangular intermediate one. To keep the ground-floor shop as one open space, he moved the entrance portal to the side and used metal framing inside, with load-bearing walls and beams around the perimeter.