Neighborhood | Constitucion
Constitucion Neighborhood
 
“I am not the Buenos Aires capital heart;
but, speaking without passion,
nobody will say that it is small the Constitucion Park”
 
Its limits and streets: Independencia avenue, Caseros avenue, Piedras street and Entre Ríos avenue. It Neighborhood Day: Establish on August 29th, of each year "Constitución Neighborhood Day" by law 835 of the Buenos Aires Autonomy City legislature. 
 
In 1850 Buenos Aires, the State capital, separated for 1852-1860, of the remainder of the Confederación Argentina, included a population of 200.000 inhabitants, that was concentrated on a few towns. 
 
Houses of poor aspect were seen near historic buildings like the Cathedral or the monument  “the May Pyramid”. 
 
When the urbanization of the city began and therefore the Victory park, May 25 park, and del Parque park, the government needed to find a place where the wagons can be concentrated, and opted for two important parks: Constitucion park and Eleven of September park(at present Miserere park). 
 
The cattle products, Buenos Aires mother industry of the colonial epoch, were conducted in wagons dragged by two or three oxen pair, being indispensable this transport for the citizens. 
 
From the middle of last century, and before the arrival of the railroad, the wagons took all the city, especially the Greater Park. 
 
The country man and the suburb man occupied the park spaces in the center of Buenos Aires. 
 
Market of the South of above the Gully
 
Little time later a market or “High Market” in the Constitucion park was installed, in order to then be called “Constitucion Market”, where the wagons would be installed.  It was located on the antique streets: Patagonian (present Brazil) street, Brazil (present Garay) avenue, Salta street and Cochabamba street. 
 
The name of the Constitution Park is discussed. There are those who think that was imposed in honor of the different constitutions (1819, 1826 and 1853) and other affirm that it was called in reference to the word “Constitucion” or symbolic expression of what is understood for Fundamental Letter. 
 
The constitucion market (1857-1885) was not more than a parking for the city wagons, that harbored 900 vehicles. 
 
The residues were also placed in that place, a newspaper of the epoch “The National” denounced on August 18th 1858: “...it is unbreathable the market atmosphere and its outskirts and it promote the apparition of a possible yellow fever focus”
 
Close to it was found The Immaculate Conception parish church (Independence avenue and Tacuarí street), the Sacred Heart chapel (Cochabamba street and San José street) and the Holy Catalina of Sienna Church, in the Brazil avenue, where all the passers went after the work day. 
 
On March 7th 1864 began the new railroad construction works. 
 
 
“...The installation of the railroad sufficed for itself to offer hierarchy and to set the destiny of that underestimated place”
(José Juan Maroni)
 
With the inclusion of the railroad the topography of the Park was modified, being concentrated the bars and clothes shops in the Brazil avenue, besides buildings of poor aspect was built in its outskirts. 
 
On some way the railroad was supplying the wagons until Nicolas Avellaneda transformed the Constitucion Market in a urbanized park. It substituted  the stop of wagons in the year 1884. 
 
In little time was built the “Cavern”, that simulated to be a castle in ruins, it was located in the Park that became the largest one of the epoch. With the passage of time this cavern was a shelter for cats and threatened to be collapsed, so it was decided to demolish it to then be constructed the subway in the year 1914. 
 
In 1880 with the need of transportation for so much load it was began to think about a new mixed station: passengers and load. In 1887 the largest station of South America was inaugurated. 
 
Obviously a second change in the Constitucion park aspect was generated, being incorporated all kinds of comforts for the passenger: Coffee stores, hotels. 
 
Nowadays that railway station palace style was lost, the degradation by the use and the daily abuse transformed it in a place of transit, while the renewal of all the Constitution Park (in that epoch the most extensive one) invited to the recreation, becoming a public walk in 1886. 
 
The great quantity of transportations in the neighborhood benefited the integration of zones and neighborhoods and also the urban development. “The 25 de Mayo” freeway divides the neighborhood from west  to east and together with “The 9 de Julio” viaduct divide the neighborhood being been able to see, currently, little of what was in other times the neighborhood. 
 
It is inevitable to see similarities of the neighborhood with other as Barracas and San Telmo, perhaps for its streets, its architecture, its people (mostly immigrant). But the Constitucion neighborhood is totally focused in been “a transit place”. The subway, the railroad, the bus lines, the pensions and hotels, the tenement houses, all is designed to this purpuse. 
 
Interest Places
 
The Art Vocational Institute (ex-Labardén) –1684 Garay  avenue- municipal school that is dedicated to teach art to children and adolescents, in parallel to the elementary education and secondary. There big Argentine artists like Julia Sandoval, Marilina Ross and Beba Bidart were educated. 
 
The Argentine Cinemateca Foundation is located in 1915 Salta street.
 
Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception parish church in 910 Independencia Avenue. 
 
In the neighborhood we can find green places like Garay Park in Juan de Garay avenue and Solís street where also a cavern existed, in  a smaller size built by Augusto Crettet. In Bernardo de Irigoyen street and Independencia avenue is found a small park in homage to the artist Alfonso Rodriguez Castelao, another small park dedicated to another artist exists: Lola Mora, located in San Juan avenue and Ceballos street, close to it another park is found in San Juan avenue and Solís street in homage to Alfonsina Storni. 
 
Along the freeway some small parls were built to take advantage of the space as public place.
 
Like this was growing the Constitucion neighborhood that still conserves those streets paved with rough stone, and with houses of the epoch. 
 
Some of the men and women that lived in this neighborhood: Pio Collivadino (National Fine Arts Academy director - lived in 1548 Luis Sáenz Roca avenue), Leopoldo and Tomás Simari (National theater figures), the poet Hector Gagliardi and Francisco Rímoli, popularly known  as Dante Linyera (who worked in the coffee that today occupies “The Frigate” in Garay avenue and Solís street). 
 
Many important writers utilized Constitucion as setting for their charcacters, Manuel Gálvez in “Suburb History” caused traveled Rosalinda by their streets, other writers were Leónidas Barletta in “The city of a man” and Juan Carlos Ghiano in the play “Narcissus, woman to cry”.  And finally Borges located in a basement of the Garay avenue “The Aleph”. 
 
I was the forty-three bus line
from La Boca to Plaza Flores
and with the two bus line was my troley
prying to Liniers;
with the nine bus line, I traveled a month
Retiro to Constitucion;
there were not corner, neither balcony,
street, mailbox or alley
that my step did not greet
with sincere admiration. ..! 
 
Hector Gagliardi
 
We cannot stop naming an important institution that is dedicated to the tango, and that is exactly located in the neighborhood: The Lunfardo Buenos Aires Academy (1379 Estados Unidos street).