Neighborhood | Florida
Florida, El Bajo and the Buenos Aires microcenter
 
“Buenos Aires proud wakes up
With the witty daughters
Of its happy floor, and this seems
Which rosebush, full of naughtiness roses
That of the love in the station flourishes.”
<Juan Cruz Varela>
 
The known “City Porteña” is conformed by all that zone in which the mixture of people, banks, change houses, businesses and shops, occupy a space that achieves to become a chaos in hours of maxim concentration. But when the working day finished, this place is lit and forms part of the nocturnal life of Buenos Aires.
 
The after office, coffees, shopping centers, clothes and leather stores, restaurant and cinemas make of the microcenter a dual space.
 
In its starts the lands were assigned to a woman called Ana Díaz. The legend says that the walker street conserves a female touch for its seduction and its bit of frivolity. Manuel Gálvez, in the “Pampa and its passion”, talked about Florida and its women “the most beautiful women of Buenos Aires”. Its name comes from a Florida valley (in the Altiplano) where the colonel Arenales beat the Spanish. 
 
I am the Florida street,
the predilect, the preferred,
without me there are not corsos neither procession,
neither even demonstrations.
<zarzuela de Gomez Carrillo>
 
In its beginnings, the architecture was precarious and irregular filled of provisory paved and deep ditches that prevented the traffic.
 
Houses of great historic interest were located there: Mariquita Sánchez de Thompson, where important decisions of our Independence were taken. The great writer Rubén Darío, lived a time in the Grand Hotel (Florida and Rivadavia), where also wrote some verses about Florida the general Mansilla:
 
“Yesterday the sonorous pavement of Florida
felt to jog the trunk of England colts,
that drag the victory where the love invites
the face of the prettiest dark of this land”
 
 
The walk
 
When the viceroy Vértiz decided to beautify the city he thought about of building a walk of only four blocks. It did not delay in becoming the favorite walk of the village. 
 
Extensive it is the list of names: “Paseo la Alameda” (“The poplar walk”), “Paseo la Rivera” (“The stream walk”) and with Juan Manuel de Rosas was arranged to call it “Paseo de la Encarnacion” (“Incarnation Walk”) and “Paseo de Julio” (“July Walk”).
 
At the beginning of the century, the walk did not have very good reputation, was seen as the same as to dance the tango: “somewhat secret”.
 
Near Retiro the stagnant water, the bad smell and the vagabonds, made of it a little healthful place.  
 
The ones that could see the walk said:
 
In a tango of Enrique González Tuñón is listened:
 
“When I left the forge, I was going to enjoy me on a coffee of the July Walk”
 
Jorge Luis Borges thought different respect to the walk:
 
“...but ¿what God, what idol, what devotion yours, July Walk? 
Every life negotiates with the death,
every happiness, with only exist, it is adverse to you.
July Walk: Sky for the ones that are form the hell.”
<Borges: “Emma Zunz>
 
It was also remembered by Alberto Vaccareza where he situated its one-act farce “In the school of silly” in a coffee of the walk.
 
In the zone of “El Bajo” is found the “Luna Park”, famous for those tributes of Argentines that said good-bye to Carlos Gardel. 
 
“In the gigantic metropolis the rumors rose. 
the Luna Park contain in its vast place
The immemorial face of anxious multitudes,
The tide of the crying and the rain of flowers.”
<González Tuñón>
 
Nearby to the Luna Park, a pension inhabited by artists was located. Boxers, actors, musicians joined in the terrace to enjoy the walk and the city of Buenos Aires. The same nostalgia carried Ignacio Anzoátegui to write:
 
“¿Do you remember those times, Luna Park,
in which you walked still in legs by the bog? 
¿Do you remember when you were middle river and suburb
and splashing by the puddles you desire to be a sea?”
 
With the time the walk was leaving its sinful breeze to become a place with qualified mansions with a very French style. The French style of Florida was reflected in the furniture factories, jewelry stores and clothes stores, where the famous tapes Saint Etienne were seen, and also hats and accessories that imitated the French style.
 
Harrods was a faithful remark of the epoch, where the better models showed the latest ones of the European clothes.
 
“Populace and aristocracy,
appearance and truth,
like in the life,
they culminate in their maximum efficacy
by Florida”
<poem of Martínez Estrada>
 
We can remember the National Theater, located between Piedad street and Cangallo street, where the most prominent families of Buenos Aires concurred. That great theater was set on fire in 1895, like the famous Jockey Club in the year 1953, also installed in the Florida street. 
 
Florida and Corrientes (The street that never sleeps)
 
Very little remains of the antique architectural stamps of the picturesque Florida. As anecdote, we can mention, that in this famous corner lived the first woman, that had in its house, an own solar. This and another histories form part of Florida, acquaintance in the year 1738 as San José, but the most noticeable was the presence of the boxing.
 
The old chaps, mostly amateurs, joined in the walker street to show their abilities. With the technique of the punch, they crammed to admire teachers as Paddy McCarthy or Gustavo Lenenvé. It was so strong the presence of the practice of the boxing that was almost necessary to install a company that gather to all its lovers; 525 Florida street since 1912 to 1914. Then other rings were established, also secret, like the one that was located in Florida street and Paraguay street. 
 
Buenos Aires, 24 open hours
 
Lavalle street and Florida street are recognized as the walker streets prefer by the town people. In some moment of our history, these were streets that during the day were traveled through by workers of the outskirts, but at night it lived for its cinemas, theaters, coffee store, pool, and all kinds of entertainments that could be offered for the town people and also for the tourist. It is a surprising characteristic for the foreigner: to found a Buenos Aires with great nocturnal activity. 
 
Nowadays the Florida street became a tourist walk, where through Diagonal Norte avenue or Corrientes avenue, you can visit the Plaza de Mayo or the Obelisk and you can do purchases in important shopping centers. Along Florida street one can sit down to savor a coffee and to observe the variety of out-on-the-street spectacles, in which exceed the tango. It can be seen out-on-the-street artists that amuse the passers-by with steps of tango. Currently our pedestrian does not have the shine that had in its moment. Walking for it causes remembers us the old cinemas, today becoming clothes stores or local fast food. Florida is the faithful reflection of the country present situation. 
 
“Today that you walk hair-creamed being a wealthy man,
that you use tailored habit that gives chiqué by Florida,
that neither pass the food if they do not give you catemán
and that you are a delighted hulk of the life”
<Celedonio Esteban Flores  “Cuando pasa el organito”>
 
A lot of tango was listened in Florida. Big orchestras passed for the Jockey coffee or by Harrods.  In the Richmond coffee strolled itself artists from the Buenos Aires gold epoch, El Ateneo was another point of encounter and the Bon Marché (in Florida street and Cordoba avenue). The tango Florida of Francisco Lomuto counts a little of this history.