Merlo (Buenos Aires)
Coordinates: 34 ° 40 ′ S , 58 ° 44 ′ W
Merlo is the capital of the Partido of the same name in Gran Buenos Aires . It has 527,658 inhabitants ( INDEC from 2010).
The city was founded on August 28, 1755 by the namesake Francisco de Merlo and rebuilt in 1859 by Juan Dillon. Today Merlo is divided into the center around the train station, which is also a residential area for the middle class, and the barrios for the lower class of the population along the Rio Reconquista. The administrative and business center is located on Avenida del Libertador General San Martín . It stretches seven blocks from the train station to the historic district and is characterized by trees and low buildings.
history
The city was initially called Villa San Antonio del Camino and was a collection of houses around the estancia of the Spaniard Francisco de Merlo, about 35 km from Buenos Aires on the road to Lima . Merlo offered free land to anyone willing to settle in the new city. 24 families with a total of 111 members accepted this offer. After Merlo's death on April 4, 1758, the land was divided between the heirs and sold to various private investors. In 1776 a church hospice was built for the poor in the region, but around 1810 the place was forgotten as there were no more important roads passing by and the parish had been relocated to Morón years earlier. In the middle of the century things started to improve again when the planned railway line to Moreno via Merlo was supposed to lead. The land needed for this belonged to Manuela Calderón de Pearson, whose son Juan Dillon saw an opportunity to make money selling the land. In 1859, Dillon commissioned the architect and engineer Pedro Benoit to design a new, checkerboard-patterned city, including a town hall, wide streets, a school and a church. The train station opened on August 11, 1859, and is now the city's oldest building.
Population development of the city
| year | population |
|---|---|
| 1980 | 292,587 |
| 1991 | 390,858 |
| 2001 | 469.985 |
| 2010 | 527,658 |
sons and daughters of the town
- Pablo Brandán (* 1983), football player
- Marcelo Daniel Gallardo (* 1976), football player
- Emanuel Mammana (* 1996), football player
- Nicolás Kicker (* 1992), tennis player
- Víctor Mercante (1870–1934), educator and writer
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Argentina: provinces, departments, cities, towns, agglomerations - population figures in maps and tables. Retrieved July 27, 2018 .