The period denotes important changes in the way of producing architecture in the country. In this there is a sum of crucial historical events in the history of the Chilean nation, due to the organizational change from being a Spanish colony to an independent republic. Independence itself led to an opening towards globalizing flows, both from an economic and social perspective, that is, flow of goods and human flows, which were in turn technological and knowledge flows. The same, further enhanced by a certain economic boom towards the middle of the century, together with the participation of European immigrants in the national concert, allowed a better assimilation of the new artistic currents that were developing in the West, and which had a radiation of different styles towards the second half of the century and the beginning of the century, and which consisted of the presence of renovating architectural avant-gardes, mainly in the neoclassical, art beaux "Beaux Arts (architecture)," art nouveau and art deco, but also, and in the American case, in a rediscovery of ancient styles of the European tradition, which led to the development of historicist styles, such as neo-Gothic, neo-Tudor, neo-Renaissance and Spanish neocolonial.
The transition of this era begins with the construction of the Palacio de La Moneda, which was conceived in the final stretch of the colony as a coin house, hence its name, and as one of the largest buildings built by the Spanish colonists at the end of the century and beginning of the century, not far from the Plaza de Armas, being completed in 1805, five years after the declaration of national independence, and established as the presidential palace of Chile once the country became independent, it became a immediate antecedent of the neoclassical style, which would become common during the early republic, coinciding with the rise of this style in the other recently independent republics of America, and representing a series of new democratic values in detachment from the preceding values associated with colonization, values such as enlightenment and reason in opposition to the religious creed, democracy and the republic in its classical Greco-Roman origin in opposition to monarchy, neatness and symmetry as operators of reason in opposition to the exuberance and religiosity of the baroque. Proof of the above is that in 1818, Bernardo O'Higgins officially declared the independence of Chile and established a republic. As he proposed and promulgated some advanced clauses, such as abolishing the nobility, developing public schools, allowing the expansion of Protestantism and promoting foreign trade, such new ideas penetrated the framework of society and architecture.[16]
In the middle of the century, the French architect Francois Brunet de Baines was commissioned by the Chilean government to create an educational system for Chilean architects. He personally directed and taught professional courses to architects until his death in 1855. During this period, he completed a textbook on architecture, which is probably one of the first books on the subject in Latin America. to mining. While the preceding coal and silver mines were an important early source of income for the state and private families alike, this process was exacerbated by the end of the War of the Pacific (1879-1884), when Chile took possession of large territories rich in deposits of saltpeter "Nitro (mineral)"). The saltpeter mining industry prospered from that point until the collapse of saltpeter prices due to the development of synthetic alternatives during World War I. During this period, many families made fortunes in the mining, shipping and banking sectors. These families were able to commission large residential projects from European and Chilean architects, carried out in the styles that were fashionable at the time.
At the end of the century even more foreign architects arrived. Some of them were hired by the government, others formed private companies, which brought new forms and technologies to Chile. These changes are reflected in many public and private buildings. Ultimately, Chile became one of the most interesting and complex architectural receptacles in Latin America in the 18th century. Many homes of wealthy families in this economic boom became commonly known as palaces. As the Great Depression of 1929 led to the financial ruin of many mining dynasties, several of these palaces were eventually acquired by city governments and now function as town halls, cultural centers or museums, while others were divided up for residential and smaller commercial uses, although not all suffered the same fate: some of these homes have fallen into disrepair, and others had to be abandoned or demolished.
The higher income received by the Chilean State through taxes and royalties on mostly foreign-owned mining companies also led to an increase in public works, although these tended to be concentrated in the capital. This period coincides with the extensive remodeling of the layout of the center of Santiago initiated by Benjamín Vicuña Mackenna, as well as multiple public buildings such as the Museum of Fine Arts, the Central Post Office Building, the National Library, the entrance to Santa Lucía Hill or the Santiago Central Station.
It is also worth mentioning that human flows, especially European immigration to Chile during this period, contributed to the creation, in an exceptional way, of some examples of cultural syncretism with an architecturally evident material dimension. This is the particular case that can be observed in the architecture of the southern part of the country, particularly in the regions of Araucanía, and with greater force in Los Ríos and Los Lagos, where the vernacularity of the use of wood was enhanced with the acquisition of aesthetics, forms and ornamentations of Germanic origin, brought by immigrants from Germany and Switzerland, and who settled in those territories.