Neighborhood | Balvanera
Puerto Madero Neighborhood (The 101 neighborhood)
 
"Ten years ago it was initiated the port works construction - today almost finished -, and nevertheless, it was not started the commercial maritime neighborhood construction that seemed its logical consequence. It was told that this neighborhood was destined to arise as the evocation of a genius and impossible things was spoken, of fabulous speculations, of hotels capable to harbor towns, Babylonian gardens of thousand extraordinary fantasies…"
 
<La Nación, A walk by the port / October 27th 1897>
 
 
Far away remained the first Buenos Aires Port if we look at the new neighborhood that today occupies its place. It seems to achieve the exact mixture so that the river and the city could be together. It is relatively virgin, it counts with pedestrian, large groves and green spaces like the Ecological Reserve, the Cárcova and buildings that date from last century that today conform the most modern of our city. 
 
All the former harbor zone invites us to travel through the modern buildings of vanguard and in direction North-South, a coastal axis relates the pedestrian walk with the zone of La Boca neighborhood. 
Its limits, in order to the ordinance of December of 1996: Elvira Rawson of Dellepiane avenue, Ing. Huergo avenue, Eduardo Madero avenue, Cecilia Grierson street and Costanera Sur. 
 
“Pedro Mendoza’s tavern
you are the soul of the port,
in each table the cups
count the history of my passion.
The hoarse voice of a drunk
sings to the dawn its diana,
like in that morning,
misty and cold, that I leave you”
<Tango: Luis Cesar Amadori/ Ivo Pelay>
 
Time ago when the Silver River navigation was somewhat dangerous because Buenos Aires did not offer the optimum physical conditions to receive them, serious difficulties were found. In the middle of last century did not exist neither soft neither port. The merchandise discharges became slow and complex operations since the ship remained 7 miles of the coast. 
 
By the precarious installations, conformed by a dock located in the entrance of the Stream and another in the Silver River, it was decided the creation of a port. 
 
Various projects were presented until arriving to the year 1881 in which we find an important antecedent. After the Buenos Aires federalization  Luis A. Huergo presented to the national government a project of a port for the city with the construction of a series of dikes in line. 
 
In 1862 the government approved the proposal of Eduardo Madero who wanted to carry out two channels of access: one at the north and another at the south. 
 
Thus they begin the works with the support of foreign financial. 
 
The port operation was continuous, the port received the biggest ships with European immigrants and products, cattle, wheat, etc. As a result of this great undertaking the Mayo avenue, Costanera avenue, the parks and the Municipal Coast extended, the Costanera walk (1925) was built by Benito Carrasco.
 
In 1911 another construction was carried out to provide dikes with greater dimensions, thus the New Port is originated, that maintained the features of the Huergo project. In the year 1925 the works were finalized giving Buenos Aires Old Port up. Since that it was insisted on recovering that space being created in 1989 the Old Puerto Madero Corporation INC.  (OPMC).  
 
The first thing that was done was a plan to sell the old buildings of brick that today are a fashionable neighborhood. 
 
 
Port Reurbanization
 
“Stream Fog!.
Hitched to the memory
I continue expecting...
Stream Fog! ...
Of that love, for always,
you are moving me away..
Never more it returned,
never more I saw her,
never more her voice named my name next to me..
that same voice that said: "Good Bye!"…”
<Tango: Enrique Cadícamo>
 
The new neighborhood expanded the city…
Seems as if the old port change was given in parallel to a reconstruction of world of the harbor historic helmets, in New York, London and Barcelona. 
 
In Argentina it was convocated to a National Ideas contest, giving as a result the Master Plan for the new neighborhood. 
 
A place that, in its then, was so commercial, should be became a center where offices, hotels, bars, restaurants, lead to a place where the tourism is somewhat essential. A space to a new one was tourist traveled became with a lot of Buenos Aires identity.
 
Today we can travel through the new neighborhood with surface of 170 has. with dwellings, internal streets, green spaces, etc.
 
The streets received the names, of different Latin-American women as: Azucena Villaflor, Juana Manuela Gorriti, Mariquita Sánchez de Thompson, Victoria Ocampo, Trinidad Guevara, Juana Manso and Alicia Moreau de Justo. 
 
In 1998 a project was done in order to include parks with the names of Argentine women: Micaela Batista, Virginia Bolten, Raquel Forner and Fenia Cherkoff. 
 
The project on the "Puerto Madero" neighborhood is considered the most ambitious one of the last times a series of dikes destined to dwelling, offices, Conventions Center, entertainments complex, Universities, museum and important and exclusive hotel complexes. 
 
Nowadays the port esthetics is very modern, and it is characterized for the drawbridge with details of the latest generation, besides the marine club that has a strategic location for people with great purchasing power. 
 
The docks are unpleasant aftertaste of the industrial architecture that inspired national and foreign professionals to propose projects to the Drafts National Contest for the Puerto Madero green areas. 
 
When you walk along for the extensive pedestrian walk one can glimpse part of that original architecture. The idea was to conserve two thirds of the first construction through special processing of brick and carpentry. 
 
It was tried to revitalize all the zone, even was wagered to revalue the Costanera Sur and intended to reflect on how to recover it, without losing its relation with the water. The contest also included a proposal for the situation of the stripe of 150 meters that flanks the Costanera: The Coipos Lake. 
 
These projects opened the new neighborhood transformation second phase. The port urbanization grew above all in the stripe that extends on the other side of the dikes. Those buildings, today, have diverse uses: dwellings, offices, expositions center that, in its entirety, seems to resemble a micro city.
 
The order seemed to be clear, to recycle buildings, to build new, to have green spaces, but above all not to lose the relation with the river. 
 
The old sheds with iron and bricks structures were built at the end of the 19th century. The great public walk, initiated with the recon version of the sheds, knocked down the borders that separated the river from the metropolis. Today the city and the river are compatible in a dialogue between the past and the present. 
The excess of our Silver River was a trigger of more than one project and finally Puerto Madero is an example of valuable lands recovery and buildings of high patrimonial value. 
 
A nature preserve
 
Our ecological reserve has an immense cultural and historic value and besides it is the natural space where flows the City and the River. 
 
The Ecological Reserve of the Costanera Sur is an unique, green space in Buenos Aires by several questions. It is found a few blocks of the microcenter and at the same time this nature preserve proposes, as a lung, a rest and a different walk inside all the giddy rhythm of the Buenos Aires city. 
 
Various roads can be undertaken in the Ecological Reserve, that conduct us to the river, being distinguished great variety of plants, trees and some species (reptilian, insects and fish).
 
Almost in the reserve entrance it is found the most famous work of the sculptress Lola Mora: the Nereids Source. It was built in Carrara marble and pink granite between 1900 and 1910. The work represents the birth of Venus, arising of a great seashell and surrounded by newts. The sculpture was transferred by different places for controversies that were common along the sculptress artistic life. Today it is found in Leandro N. Alem avenue and Perón street. 
 
 
 
The Buenos Aires one hundred neighborhoods - 1945- Rodolfo Sciammarella and Carlos Petit
 
I am part of my town and I owe it what I am;
I speak with its same verb and song with its same voice.
 
I have wanted to yield the neighborhoods a sincere homage of love
and I do not find prettier motive than offering it in a song.
 Each one brings me a memory, each one gives me an emotion;
I have wanted to yield the neighborhoods a sincere homage of love.
 
Barracas, La Boca, Boedo, Belgrano, Palermo, Saavedra and Liniers,
Urquiza, Pompeya, Patricios, San Telmo and Flores, my yesterday neighborhood, Balvanera, Caballito, Villa Luro and Montserrat, Villa Crespo, Almagro and Lugano,
Retiro and Paternal.
 
Buenos Aires one hundred neighborhoods, one hundred neighborhoods of love,
one hundred neighborhoods put in my heart.