San Nicolás (Buenos Aires)

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Location of San Nicolás in Buenos Aires

San Nicolás is a district in the east of the Argentine capital Buenos Aires . It has 33,305 inhabitants (as of 2001) on an area of ​​2.4 km² . The population density corresponds to 13,877 inhabitants per km². The district belongs to Comuna C1.

description

San Nicolás is part of the business center of Buenos Aires. Here and in neighboring Montserrat are most of the government buildings in the city and in the country, including the Palace of Justice. San Nicolás is also the financial center of Buenos Aires. One usually speaks of El Centro . The part east of Avenida 9 de Julio is called Microcentro .

San Nicolás is bounded by Avenida Córdoba , Avenida Callao , Avenida Rivadavia , Av. La Rábida Norte and Av. Eduardo Madero.

Old and new coexist in San Nicolás

history

The district got its name from the Church of San Nicolás, which was consecrated in 1773 and demolished in 1936 when construction began on Avenida 9 de Julio . The obelisk now stands at the former location of the church .

In 1770 the construction of the Catedral Metropolitana de Buenos Aires on the Plaza de Mayo began, in 1822 it was inaugurated.

In 1794 the British consulate was opened, in the course of which many British settled in San Nicolás, which was then also known as the "English Quarter". The British Merchants Society was founded in 1810 and the consulate also became the seat of the first modern bank in Buenos Aires in 1822.

In 1802, made possible by the increasing prosperity during the Viceroyalty , merchants from Buenos Aires built the “Boneo-Pier”, which quickly became the city's most important landing stage.

Due to the close economic ties to the British Empire , the then governor Juan Manuel de Rosas donated land for the Anglican Church “St. John". It is now the oldest Anglican church in the city. A growing community of American immigrants built the Methodist Church nearby in 1836 .

The increasing importance of San Nicolás as a financial center was highlighted by the opening of the Buenos Aires Stock Exchange in 1854. Today the Argentine Central Bank and the largest bank in Argentina, the Banco de la Nacion, are also located here . This part of San Nicolás is also called the Microcentro by the locals .

In 1857 the first train station in Latin America was opened in San Nicolás across from today's Teatro Colón . The economic boom from 1875 onwards led to the construction of the Paseo de Julio (today Avenida Leandro N. Alem ) along the river, where until then only laundresses were active, and artillery training areas were converted into public parks.

In 1913, the horse trams that had been common up until then were replaced by the first metro line in the southern hemisphere. Well-known institutions such as the Teatro Colón , the Teatro Ópera and the Teatro Cervantes were followed by numerous other theaters in the 1920s and 1930s, and later also cinemas, making San Nicolás a kind of West End of Buenos Aires.

San Nicolás received its current cityscape when five blocks of streets were demolished in 1936 for the construction of the first section of Avenida 9 de Julio . Historic landmarks, including the Mercado del Plata and the Church of San Nicolás , also fell victim to the wrecking ball . The pedestrian zone on Florida Street is also popular with tourists today .

Web links

Commons : San Nicolás (Buenos Aires)  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Coordinates: 34 ° 36 ′  S , 58 ° 23 ′  W