Avenida de Mayo
The Avenida de Mayo [ aβeˈniða de ˈmaʒo ] ( Spanish. "Maiallee") is a large avenue in the Montserrat district of Buenos Aires , Argentina . Planned as a majestic boulevard based on the Parisian model and opened on July 9, 1894 after heated arguments, the Avenida de Mayo is today a symbol of Argentine-Spanish relations and reflects the social problems of Buenos Aires.
The avenue, lined mainly with maple-leaved plane trees (platanus acerifolia) , connects the historic Plaza de Mayo with the Plaza del Congreso and halfway crosses the 16-lane main artery Avenida 9 de Julio . It begins at the corner of Calle Bolívar (after Simón Bolívar ) and runs between the southern parallel street, Calle Hipólito Yrigoyen (after Hipólito Yrigoyen ) and the northern Avenida Rivadavia (after Bernardino Rivadavia ). The 1350 meter long five-lane one - way street has a lane width of 17 meters and 3.25 meters of pavement on both sides. The houses along the boulevard are numbered from 500 to 1400, the tallest buildings on the roadside are the HSBC with 29, the Galicia Norte with 25 and the Palacio Barolo with 22 floors. Line A of the Buenos Aires metro, the oldest metro line in the southern hemisphere, runs under Avenida de Mayo .
Although planned according to the French model, the constant stream of Iberian immigrants transformed Avenida de Mayo over time into an unmistakably Spanish boulevard in the style of Gran Vía in Madrid . The harmonious coexistence of Art Nouveau , Classicism and Eclecticism in the architecture of the adjacent buildings has meanwhile been destroyed by inconsiderate structural measures. An Argentine-Spanish renovation project and the monument protection that has existed since 1997 have largely restored the former splendor.
Since the Avenida de Mayo connects the presidential palace Casa Rosada with the official building of the Argentine National Congress , it is the first official route for newly elected presidents and a preferred location for national celebrations. Heroes such as the crew members of the seaplane Plus Ultra after the first Atlantic crossing and the Spanish aviator Jorge Newbery were celebrated here, but famous personalities were also buried with funeral marches. The Avenida de Mayo is also the classic route for protest marches.
history
Between 1850 and 1880 there were still two parallel forms of expression in the public space of Buenos Aires, namely the colonial, which was gradually dissolving, and the bourgeois, which was replacing it, whose model in Paris was that of that under Napoleon III. acting Georges-Eugène Haussmann had been created. Domingo Faustino Sarmiento , who saw Torcuato de Alvear , Mayor of Buenos Aires from 1883 to 1887, as the “Argentine Haussmann”, had with his book “ Barbarism and Civilization ” (1845) created the long-lasting basis for using France as a model for the Orientation of the Argentine nation-state.
In 1880 Buenos Aires became the capital of Argentina. Port construction work, the then still young railway and a steady stream of immigrants increased the economic traffic and the population density of the big city. Politicians and intellectuals like Alvear - the "80s generation" (generación del 80) - drove technical progress and tried to build Buenos Aires into a modern cosmopolitan city with the help of foreign investments.
Planning and disputes
Alvear pursued this goal by making the streets of the city center more attractive. In 1882 he turned to the then Argentine Interior Minister Bernardo de Irigoyen with the request to build a splendid boulevard. Irigoyen was supposed to confirm the charitable nature of this project in order to establish the legal basis for state subsidies and the necessary expropriation of property owners between the Plaza de la Victoria (now Plaza de Mayo ) and Plaza Lorea and the streets Avenida Rivadavia and Calle Victoria (now Calle Hipólito Yrigoyen ) to accomplish. On October 31, 1884, Alvear submitted Law No. 1583 for consideration, which would authorize the construction of a 30-meter-wide avenue called 25 de Mayo between the demarcated boundary points.
From that moment on, the project was hotly debated. The opponents of the project criticized that there were more urgent things than the construction of a magnificent avenue: water pipes and sewers were to be expanded, the streets repaired and the source of numerous fever infections drained with the swamps near the city.
In addition to the aspect of beautification, the municipal administration countered that the street was indispensable in order to relieve the flow of traffic between the city port and the train station at Plaza Once de Septiembre and to improve the hygienic conditions by improving the air supply to the city center as a "lung" Provide relief to an epidemic-ridden city. In 1884 Alvear was removed from office for a short time because, in the opinion of the opposition, he put "the superfluous above the necessary" and wasted state money.
An important question in the planning phase was whether the boulevard should be built by widening the northern Avenida Rivadavia or by drawing in a completely new stretch between the parallel streets Rivadavia and Victoria. The architect and director of public works Juan Antonio Buschiazzo enforced the latter because it avoided the contradiction between new buildings on the south side and decrepit old buildings on the north side and because Rivadavia and Victoria were not perfectly parallel and additional harmonizing construction work would have been necessary. The newspaper La Nación also spoke out in favor of the second draft, but for the more pragmatic reason that in this way the foundations of dilapidated structures would have to be forcibly cleaned up.
The National Congress of Argentina, however, postponed the decision on Alvear's "street opening law": the Senate could not agree on the grant issue because the Chamber of Deputies was discussing the term "charitable". The problem was that the state could only give the municipality financial resources if the necessity of the construction work for the well-being of the population was proven.
The start of construction was later delayed because of the expropriations. The expropriations drove up the project costs, because the affected strip was densely populated and a lot of residents had to be compensated. The population feared that the city could not afford the project, because according to the applicable municipal law, the expropriation not only included the land itself, but also all other properties that were sold at the highest bid. Alvear countered these fears by arguing that the rise in property values and the luxury shops that were attracted by the construction of the boulevard would outweigh the loss.
The expropriated themselves argued that the expropriation was unconstitutional as it claimed larger areas than were ultimately necessary. This sparked a new fundamental debate about the legality of the forced sales, especially those areas that the plan did not actually need. The mayor replied that the city offered more than property was worth, which was for the benefit of those affected. The case of Isabel Armstrong de Elortondo, whose property was divided into two parts on Calle Perú , caused a stir . The Supreme Court ruled in 1888 that the city was only allowed to buy that part of the land that was necessary for the construction of the avenue. After this ruling, residents were able to demand large sums of money and at the same time benefit from the subsequent increase in the value of their property.
In 1888, the hygiene doctor Antonio F. Crespo took up the post of mayor. He spoke out in favor of rejecting the street opening law of his predecessor and argued that a single avenue was not enough to improve ventilation and hygiene in the inner city. The intended construction of the Avenida de Mayo could only be an ornament without any practical use.
At the time of Crespo's criticism, however, the decision had already been made: The public spoke out in favor of carrying out the project. If the avenue was originally called 25 de Mayo , it was now agreed on Avenida de Mayo , as an allusion to the May revolution on May 25, 1810, which led to the establishment of the first Argentine government.
Demolition work
On May 25, 1888, the demolition work for the Avenida de Mayo began. First, the oldest public buildings on Plaza de Mayo were torn down: the police headquarters (Casa de Policía) , the three northern arches of the Cabildo City Council building and the fire department (Cuartel de Bomberos) .
Crespo had resigned from office due to illness and the new mayor Francisco Seeber was on a trip to Europe, so that at the beginning of the demolition work, Guillermo Cranwell temporarily held the post of mayor. When Seeber returned a short time later, as impressed by the Parisian architectural style as some of his predecessors and with a head full of ideas, construction of the first large commercial buildings on Plaza de Mayo had already begun. Seeber then went back to Europe without carrying out his construction plans and gave his office internally to Francisco Bollini . They waited for the return of Torcuato de Alvear, who was to recover from an illness in Europe and was only too happy to carry out the project he had initiated himself. However, Alvear died on December 8, 1890 on his way back to Argentina without ever having seen the construction work on the Avenida.
Bollini was confronted with the economic crisis in 1890 and limited himself to the administration. During his tenure, the decision was made to build the Palacio de Gobierno de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires on the corner of Bolívar and Avenida de Mayo. Its construction, however, turned out to be difficult and costly due to the limited resources, as the dispossessed continued to demand high compensation. The originally agreed budget of 4 million pesos had to be increased to 10.5 million and finally to 12.5 million pesos in 1892. Miguel Cané succeeded Bollini as mayor. Although he was a driving force behind the previous project, he had to hold back in order to get by with the limited financial means due to the delicate economic situation.
Opening and closing
Finally, the Avenida de Mayo was opened under Cané's successor Federico Pinedo on July 9, 1894 with a pompous ceremony and to the cheers of the people. The day before there had been a torchlight procession, the day after a twenty-minute fireworks display was lit in Plaza Lorea. At the western end of the street a large archway was built with the inscription 9 de Julio de 1816 - 9 de Julio de 1894 . The headlights of the battleship Admiral Brown lit the Plaza de Mayo, whose fountains were transformed into Chinese pagodas.
The actual completion of the construction work did not take place until September of the same year. Although 85 of the 115 plots affected could be bought cheaply through tax exemption, the construction costs totaled 14 million pesos.
literature
- E. Radovanovic: Buenos Aires: Avenida de Mayo. Ediciones Turísticas de Mario Banchik, 2002. ISBN 987-9473-15-9
- D. Schávelzon: Túneles de Buenos Aires, Historias, mitos y verdades del subsuelo porteño. Sudamericana, 2005. ISBN 950-07-2701-3
- VO Cutolo: Buenos Aires: Historia de las calles y sus nombres. Buenos Aires: Elche, 1994. ISBN 950-99212-0-3
- VO Cutolo: Buenos Aires: Historia de los barrios de Buenos Aires. Buenos Aires: Elche, 1996. ISBN 950-99212-2-X
- DA del Pino, RE Longo, EB Himschoot, RA Ostuni, EJ Roca, EH Puccia, LJ Martin, A. Lomba: Buenos Aires: Los cafés, sencilla historia. Librerías Turísticas, 1999. ISBN 987-9105-11-7
- Crónica Histórica Argentina. Volume V. CODEX, 1968.
- Los36Billares.com.ar Cultural section of the website of Bar 36 Billares , section La Avenida de Mayo
Individual evidence
- ↑ http://www.redcomunicacion.org/memorias/pdf/2009anguerin-ponencia_san_luis_versi_n_final.pdf (link not available)
- ↑ Rocío Antúnes Olivera, p. 70. ( Memento from January 20, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
- ^ "Don Torcuato de Alvear", en El Nacional . 17 de enero de 1885. Citado en el libro Buenos Aires, Avenida de Mayo, p53, de Elisa Radovanovic (ver referencias)
- ↑ Diario La Nación , 9 de julio de 1894, en Buenos Aires, Avenida de Mayo , p42, de E. Radovanovic (ver referencias)
- ↑ Revista Buenos Aires nos cuenta n ° 16, pág 39, (1988), redactora Elisa Casella de Calderón, Ediciones Turísticas, ISBN 987-9473-01-9
Web links
Coordinates: 34 ° 36 ′ 31.5 ″ S , 58 ° 22 ′ 43 ″ W.