This chapter presents the unknown professional career of the Italian architect Silvio Contri, developed between 1888 and 1924. His formative beginnings in Rome and his time as a migrant through America are described. In this continent, Contri had professional activity in the cities of Rosario and Buenos Aires, Argentina, and later, in Mexico City, the Port of Veracruz and the northern Sierra de Puebla - although activity in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil is also attributed to him-. Little known and studied, Contri was one of the Italian architects with the greatest building production at the turn of the century in Mexico, counting among his professional repertoires at least twelve built works and five unfinished projects. His prestige as an architect even led him to receive from King Vittorio Emanuele III the order of knighthood and the Cross of the Crown of Italy. In the personal sphere, this chapter also reveals Contri’s stays in New Orleans, where he married for the second time and remained in political exile during the peak years of the Mexican Revolution. He will return from that city in post-revolutionary times to rejoin his professional activities in Mexico City. Finally, he will leave, already with Mexican nationality, to Paris, where he will die with his wife Margarita Sable.
Keywords: Silvio Contri, Architecture, 19th Century, Italy-America.