Biography | Frida Kahlo — The Red Cross Rooms on San Jeronimo After the Tram

People treat the 1925 crash as a myth with no address. The ambulance door sat on this street. On 17 September 1925 a Coyoacán-line bus and a Tlalpan tram met at the corner then called Cuauhtemotzín and Calzada de San Antonio Abad. The streets are Fray Servando Teresa de Mier and Pino Suárez now. The market of San Lucas that faced the crossing is gone. Kahlo was eighteen. A metal handrail went through her pelvis. El Universal printed the crash the next morning and named her among the gravely hurt. The ambulance took her a few blocks to the Cruz Roja hospital, then housed in the old Hospital Concepción Béistegui. Ambulances left by Segunda Calle de San Jerónimo. The building stands at Regina 7, in the former convent of Regina Coeli. The Red Cross occupied these rooms from 1916 to 1934. She spent about a month here, then months in a plaster corset at home. The painting started in that convalescence, first in a hospital bed, then in the blue house. The site museum and the Museo Nacional de la Cruz Roja Mexicana now share the convent. The pin is the hospital that received her, not the vanished intersection. Photo: building and street as they stand; pin at Regina 7.