A REMARKABLE STREET

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 56, Issue 4043, 4 May 1938, Page 4

A REMARKABLE STREET

IN BUENOS AIRES. THE AVENUE DE MAYO. As long ago as 1536, about thirty years before Shakespeare was born, a Spanish adventurer bearing the name of Pedro de Mendoza, turned the blunt bows of .his ship out of the blue of the Atlantic into the brown waters of the Rio de la Plata. Sailing on for about 150 miles, he saw a low, level piece of country, and, climbing up its banks, he and his men landed on the spot where the great city of Buenos Aires stands to-day. These sturdy fellows built a few huts of reeds and mud, but before long the Indians attacked them so vigorously that the entire force sailed away up the Pearana River to the Paraguay, and established the first permanent Spanish settlement at Suncion. Nothing more happened until 1580, when Juan de Garay came down from the newly-settled north, and founded a settlement on Mendoza’s site. With his men around him he drew his sword, slashed the tall grasses and challenged all and sundry to contest his right to the spot. Thus, says W. H. Koebel, began Buenos Aires. Having brought cattle and horses with him, Garay was before long shipping hides to Spain. There were no valuable minerals to be found, and it was not till the beginning of the nineteenth century that intercourse with Europe became general. It is now claimed that Buenos Aires is one of the most rapidly progressing cities in the world. Whereas in 1584 an entire street corner was bartered for a white horse and a guitar, the city now boasts over two million inhabitants, sky scrapers, an underground railway, fine avenues and squares and bustling crowds. The capital of the Argentine Republic is a cleanly city, partly because it houses are cream, white or yellowish tan. Mr W. R. Barbour, writing in the “National Geographic Magazine,” refers to the narrowness of the streets and pavements. In some parts only three feet or less is the distance from kerb to wall, but the newer streets are wide and have shrubs and grass in the centre. The city covers 75 square miles, and the Rio de la Plata forms one of its sides, the other being the small stream Riachuelo. Along both of these are docks, basins and warehouses. The streets are mostly at right angles and some of them are named from months of the year. The

chief artery of the city, the Avenida de Mayo, is simply May-avenue.

The great Plaza de Mayo is the centre of the official life of the community. It contains the Casa Rosada (Pink House), where the President of the Republic lives, and the cathedral is another of its ornaments. From this square May-avenue stretches for a mile and a half through the heart of the city, until it ends in the Plaza del Congress, on which is the marble palace, the meeting place of the republic. The Pink House corresponds to the American White House, has dignified entrances, handsome carvings and bas-reliefs, and it was in the Plaza de Mayo that on May 25, 1810, the independence of the Argentine was first proclaimed.

The May-avenuq, with the subway under it, has a general aspect not unlike what one may see any day in Paris —hotels, fine shops and cafes, with tables on the pavement and under awnings. The Capitol facing Congress-square has an extraordinary resemblance to the Capitol at Washington. The dome weighs 30,000 tons, and required an inverted cupola of stone for the foundation. The entire building has dignity and grace, with Corinthian columns in the facade, and groups of statuary, which include winged figures and spirited steeds. Mr J- A. Hammerton, an English critic, felt that the interior central hall is of mean proprotions and certain inner courtyards are out of harmony with the prevailing style of the building. No doubt its defects have been remedied since Mr Hammerton saw it. He was equally severe on the architecture of the cathedral, which reminded him of “a provincial stock exchange building gone wrong.” Another traveller thought the twelve Corinthian columns with the rows of electric lights entwining them, looked somewhat bizarre.

Perhaps the most wonderful building in the street is that which adjoins the municipal mansion or town hall, and is known as the Palace of La Preusa the home of the famous Buenos Aires daily newspaper. The stranger is welcome and shown over the princely room of the editor, the distinguished visitors’ suite and the gorgeously decorated salon. The sight of the city from the tower of La Preusa, where the Goddess of Light holds her flaming torch, is one that can rarely be equalled. It is like looking at Paris by night from the dome of Sacre Caeur, or at London from the clock tower at Westminster. The European views would be more beautiful, but not more impressive, because the flatness of Buenos Aires makes it possible to “ survey all the flat city to its utmost limits, and even to distinguish the twinkling lights of La Plata, the provincial capital, twenty-four miles away. For mile upon mile the eye can follow the main streets with their double lines of radiant dots.”

Mr Hammerton found the interior of the Preusa building everything that our English ideas would expect a newspaper office not to be. The magnificent salon is for invited guests to be entertained by actors and celebrated operatic stars from Europe. The staff has a sports room, and the physicians and surgeons on the staff have room with all the latest surgical and medical equipollent. Readers of the paper can come here for free advice and treatment. There is also a legal department. The building is the most interesting and distinctive feature of the city, and a notable ornament of the May-avenue.

The planning of Buenos Aires arrests the attention of the visitor. The buildings are in blocks or squares, measuring a hundred and fifty yards each way, but here and . there a larger square is found. The streets themselves are narrow and this makes the handling of goods a difficulty in front of warehouses. The tram line is generally on one side. Motor cars are abundant and imposing. One wide-awake tourist noticed the preponderance of chemists’ and druggists’ shops, and the corner shop is generally a pharmacy. Shops for polishing boots, for selling lottery tickets are everywhere, and the number of book shops says something for the culture of the people.

Among many conspicuous buildings on or adjoining May-avenue are a magnificent Jockey Club and the “Tribunales” or Courts of Justice. The straightness of the May-avenue suggests the Haussmann boulevards in Paris. The buildings in it rise to six, eight or even a dozen stories and their solidity and beauty make it a city street that is among the world’s best. One cannot look upon it without recalling that in the early sixteenth century the first European structures were mud huts, that its growth after it had been founded was sadly hampered by Spanish ignorance and officialism, that fierce battles raged in its vicinity, that it was held by the British, then by the Argentine Creoles, disturbed by blockades and only in recent times attained to independence. To-day not one street, but many, can boast of attractive and busy crowds from morning till night and some of them all night long. Since the revolution of 181'0 and the separation from Spain, new life came to the great city and we may hope the best is yet to be.