San José de Flores

It is told that this flowery neighborhood was always looked after by a goddess, the protective deity of the fields and gardens: Flora. Perhaps it conserves that air of gardens in spite of the urban cement.

 

A neighborhood with so much history that started as a summer town, and continued being one of our city first neighborhoods. It is attributed to Flores so much of our history that could not stop harboring characters that formed part of the city culture. Our tangueros stepped hardly on the San Jose floor, but besides all in our heart.

 

Flores today is known as one more neighborhood, but in the  last century it was a town founded by Ramón Francisco Flores. 

 

It is distinguished among all the neighborhoods of the great Buenos Aires for being the unique village between Lujan and Buenos Aires, because of that it was an inn almost obliged for the travelers. 

 

The Church and its park

 

In November of 1806 the neighbors of the town began to build a very precarious chapel in the Rivera Indarte street, that then continued the engineer Felipe Senillosa gratituosly. The Church was inaugurated on December 11^th,1831 with feasts and with the presence of the governor Juan Manuel de Rosas. Some time later, and with the apparition of the railroad and the progressive increase of the population, the temple began to remain small, and was resolved to demolish it in the year 1879 to build a basilica, that can still be visited. 

The uncultivated set against the Church became park, after being nocturn parking for wagons, to execute condemned to death, and in certain occasions for feasts of political publicity. Recently in the year 1854 they began to clean the land to rebuilt in a public walk to baptize it later with the name of “14 de Julio”. 

 

The Flores park  was the first one that had a carrousel for children (1862) and on Sundays bands of music were presented. In 1870 the name was changed for “Plaza de San José”. 

 

Little time after the foundation of the neighborhood, Flores had the form of an oblong one circundado by a street called “Calle de la Circunvalación”. Inside, the streets received different names on February 26^th,1870. 

 

In Rosas period it began to abound the luxurious farm land and Flores became a summer place. The town people attended on Sundays to the San José of Flores Church, that years later the writer Roberto Arlt considered in its book Aguafuerte “the prettiest one of the city”. 

 

The darm land with greater renown were that of Mauritani, that of Quinteros, that of Firado, that of Naón, among others. But with the passage of time they were fragmenting in lots, the characteristic palaces of the zone began to lose their splendor, and even some were demolished. The landscape was changing, some writers knew to express it...

 

 

The Flores cemetery  had two locations, the first one that remained until 1832 (in the Church lateral) and the second in Varela street, Remedios street and Tandil street. The present one was inaugurated on April 9, 1867 in a land that today is located in Basualdo street. Its style dates from 1911 where is emphasized a mausoleum on the central street.  There you can read: “Here lie down the mortal remainders of the Flores family, founders of this town”

 

The Flores Station was constructed in 1885, but the previous one station, in 1857, located in Caracas street and Gavilán street. It was a shed roof of wood with cardboard ceiling, in 1864 a platform was built in order to build then the building…In it is found the passage “Hugo del Carril” as an internal alley.  

 

The tango

 

 

Flores is the universe where grew, were born, and inhabited large characters of our tango: Hugo Del Carril, Rosita Melo, Agustin Magaldi, Floreal Ruiz and José Razzano are some of them. Such is the appreciation that Armando Acquarone and Enrique Gaudino have to the neighborhood that they dedicated it tango: “San José of Flores” (1936)

 

These are some of the Flores neighbors that formed part of our culture: Roberto Arlt, who was born and passed its infancy there. He saw the transformation of the neighborhood, the cinema “El Pueyrredón”, the Pellerano bookstore where he began to interest for the literature. 

 

Luis Cané also spoke of Flores in its “Elogio un poco cursi de las chicas de Flores”:

Something had the neighborhood women that also Oliverio Girondo dedicated them some words in “Veinte poemas para ser leídos en el tranvía”

 

A big one of the tango was Nira Etchenique who related the transformation of Flores:

The Flores coffees: “La Maga” of San Pedrito and Falcón “La Subasta”

When SADAIC named Rosita as the "20th century Woman "it was not mistaken and Flores had the privilege of harbor in its streets. Rosita Melo, was born in Montevideo on July 9th, 1897, but when situated in Buenos Aires, she was installed in the neighborhood.  Even when she marries Victor Piuma Velez in the year 1922 she decides to remain in Flores. 

 

 

You can visit the house in which inhabited Agustín Magaldi in 212 General Jose G. Artigas street, and the house of Alfonsina Storni in 578 Terrada street.