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In the middle of Plaza Baralt is this building that was the first skyscraper in Maracaibo, and the first building in Venezuela with elevator, besides being the first with neon sign and according to Kurt Nagel von Jess the first pharmacy in the city.
It was built in 1925 on the land where the house of the Marquis of Perijá used to be, who left it in charge of some relatives in 1793 and was ceded to Rafael Urdaneta in 1825, who, according to some people, lost it playing with the French Captain Nicolás Joly.
In 1910 it was bought by the firm Belloso Hermanos, who had it demolished in 1923 and the two-story house gave way to the construction of the building, which was built entirely of concrete with an iron structure and 4 floors totaling 20 meters in height.
The project engineers were Rojas and Poveda. Dr. Pedro José Rojas was in charge of the execution of the work.
According to Orlando Arrieta: "The interior has no dividing walls; each floor rests on 16 columns and in the center of the building there is a central internal wall that joins them all, covered with iron and corrugated glass".
In addition to this the building has two electric elevators and one hand elevator and what ended up being the most representative of it, two curly-haired Atlanteans with their hands on their waists and dressed only with mudguards, made of Carrara marble, which are popularly known as Sansones since they seem to support the building, placed on a neoclassical façade with Greek influences.
The first floor was used for retail sales and offices, the second floor for the drugstore and laboratory, the third floor for the warehouse and the top floor for storage and packing.
The place sold various imported and domestic products, including electrical appliances, as well as medicines and self-made preparations such as Pasteur Emulsion and Egyptian Cream.
The pharmacy operated there until 1958, when the Belloso family moved the offices to its headquarters on Falcón Street, selling the property in 1966 and passing from one owner to another until today, the last known owner was Alejandro Tortolero, who has passed away.
In 2016 it began to be recovered as part of the remodeling plans for Plaza Baralt.