Neighborhood | Palermo
Palermo: the most extensive neighborhood
 
 
“Palermo of the principle, you had
some fibs to do the brave,
and a native pack to cover the life,
and some eternal streets, to know the death.”
(Borges)
 
Each neighborhood has something that distinguishes it from the other, and its characteristic is that it is not only a neighborhood, it is many. The neighborhood according the 1972 ordinance, occupied  a surface of more than 900 hectares, among the 20.000 of the city. 
 
Palermo is, without doubts, a neighborhood of tango, there started Pugliese in a place located in Thames street and Cordoba avenue, there also lived Troilo, and Borges. 
 
Its limits: La Pampa street, Figueroa Alcorta avenue, Valentin Alsina street, Zabala street, Cabildo avenue, Jorge Newbery street, Cramer street, dorrego street, Cordoba avenue, Mario Brave street, Coronel Díaz avenue, Las Heras avenue, Tagle street, Jeronimo Salguero street, Costanera Rafael Obligado avenue. 
 
All started in 1836 with the purchase of lands for the Juan Manuel de Rosas residence construction, that was situated in Liberator avenue and Sarmiento street. Then it was used as Military Arts and Crafts School headquarters. 
 
The history of the neighborhood’s name it is not clear yet, but it is believed that it’s in homage to Juan Dominguez Palermo, who was the owner of the lands in the 17th century. The other hypothesis is based on that it was designed the name for the image of San Benito de Palermo, first saint of black race. 
 
Italy Park and the three Gardens
 
“Old Palermo of then
today you return to my mind...
 how many absent friends
as I remember...
those festivals nights…
those happiness nights...
and that tango that was heard
among cups of "champang"
(" To bread and water"- Juan Carlos Cobian and Enrique Cadicamo)
 
The Zoological Garden was created by dispositions of Rosas and after Sarmiento, in the year 1874. They relate that, located in the old Parque Tres de Febrero (“February 3th Park”), was then located on the “Jardín de Animales” (“Animals Garden”) (1848). The idea was to follow the European example of building a zoo in important cities. 
 
It was in 1888 when the mayor decided to separate the sections of the zoo and the Botanic Park. 
 
“I have always known this land  as a field almost desolated, kind  of river dweller prairie, low and with bathed physiognomy (…). In it grazed in another time the cavalry of Rosas”
 
(Holmberg-Naturalistic)
 
The Japanese Garden was created in 1976 by initiative of the Japanese Association in Argentina. It gathers 500 trees, floral plants, bridges and waterfalls, a decoration that approach us to the Japanese culture, besides admiring the walk with the great quantity of gaudy color fish. 
 
The Botanical Garden is a true museum at free air with form of triangle that aims toward the present Italy Park, or antique “Plazoleta de los Portones” (“Portones small park”). It was created by the  February  Three Park law that advised the formation of a Plants Garden and a Plants Conservatory or Greenhouse.  The park was inaugurated in 1875, under the Nicolas Avellaneda presidency, that said in his speech:
 
“Is the primitive forest magnolia, with its white wild flower, that numerous towns of  America entangled in the loose hair of its young women, like symbol of purity.”
 
Its function is essential for our city, abounded with cement, it gives us the beautiful possibility to know a great variety of vegetable species, trees, flowers, and it is a place that is worth to visit. 
 
As the same as the garden, the Andalusian Patio located near the roses garden, offers a different way of  looking  to the neighborhood. It was donated in 1929 by Seville and contains Sevillian ceramics colors pieces. 
 
“Rosedal, (roses garden)
decadent Parnassus.
Each time that I contemplate your lake
sarcophagus of fetuses and of a disjointed
I feel crazy desires to adorn it with tins
brasses,
old boots,
with a cage bed,
with a cuspidor
the same as in the Pompeya quagmires
Homero Manzi”
 
Plaza Italia (Italy Park) is a characteristic place of the neighborhood where converge Santa Fe avenue and Juan Gregorio Las Heras avenue (old Chavango avenue).
 
In 1897 the “Portones de Palermo”were located in front of it, de las Palmeras avenue, toward the right the Rosas Big House, the Botanical Garden and by its side the Zoological Garden, to the left the Argentine Rural Society, with a surface of 12 hectares, inaugurated in the year 1878. 
 
Today it is no longer seen to pass the “electric tranway”, in that station is found the Nation Bank. The park had several phases: in the first, the Sundays and festive days it was a walk for quantities of families that visited the zoo, then the rose garden, and finally  the Palermo lakes, rowing in rowboat or in the Japanese Garden.
 
In another phase it became the provincial people epicenter, where sailors, conscripts, and  women dedicated to the domestic service were found. All looked for diversion, and try to revive in the Italy Park, a kind of “town park”, lost when they arrived to the great city. 
 
We can remember the epoch dance salons, where the boyishness resorted. Some of them also were “appointment houses”:
 
. “Palacio Palermo” (“Palermo Palace”) (Godoy Cruz street, between Santa Fe avenue and Beruti street)
· “La Enramada” (“The Bower”) (Santa Fe avenue)
· “El Kakuy” (“The Kakuy”) (Thames street between Güemes street and Charcas street)
· “El Palacio Guemes” (“The Güemes Palace”), then Spanish Farmhouse
· “Salon Bonpland” (“Bonpland Parlor”)
· “Hansen”: according to Cadícamo words “Was a brave, but very amusing environment, with women, beverages and music of tangos. ..”
· “El Armenmonville” (“The Armenonville”): first Buenos Aires luxury cabaret, where Gardel-Razzano obtained their first important labor contract. 
 
 
“Old Armenonville
you are the distant past...
what distant remained the applauses
when the début of Gardel-Razzano!”
Enrique Cadícamo
 
 
Jorge Luis Borges and the tango
 
“It was an entire square and in my neighborhood,
in Palermo.
An entire square but in middle of the field,
exposed to the dawns and rains and flows.
The smooth square that persists in my neighborhood:
Guatemala, Serrano, Paraguay and Gurruchaga…”
 
The Argentine poet was a neighbor of the neighborhood, he lived in 2135 Serrano street, between Guatemala street and Paraguay street. So much he loved his neighborhood that he dedicated it a book “Evaristo Carriego” where its characters are found in a scenography where abound details about Palermo. 
 
“There were prickly pear holes,
and the Maldonado hostile banks
-less water than clay in the drought-,
and fools paths in which the cut blazed
and an iron whistles border…”
 
Palermo has many coffee stores and bowers, they were important in epochs in which cultural activities occupied their spaces. Retail stores, shops, business that became sophisticated coffee stores. “El Café Hansen” (“The Hansen Coffee Store”), “La pulpería Solde Mayo” (“The May Sun retail store”) (Santa Fe avenue and Thames street), “El café Maldonado” (“The “Maldonado Coffee Store”), “Café Las Violetas” (“The Violets Coffee Store”), “Café Los Portones” (“The Portones Coffee Store”), “Café El Pedigree” (“The Pedigree Coffee Store”), “Cervecería Munich” (“Munich Brewery”), “Café Atenas” (“Athens Coffee Store”) and “Café El Maratón” (“The Marathon Coffee Store”), among others…
 
Important neighbors of Palermo attended them: the popular poet Evaristo Carriego (3748 Honduras street), the woman poet Alfonsina Storni (2200Acevedo street), the great novelist Roberto Arlt (2292 Malabia street), Arturo Capdevila (3565 Juncal street)
 
The tango “Palermo” with Juan Villalba and Hermido Braga letter, and the Enrique Delfino music recorded by Gardel on October 23th, of the same year, counts us more about its history:
 
 
Damned be, Palermo! 
You have me dry and sick,
badly dressed and without eat,
because money  on Sundays
I skate with the rags
in the National Hache (Hippodrome).
 to look for those who doesn’t lose
I choke with the Green one
and I study the pedigree
and in spite of the long handbook
I release in the window
all the work of the month