Avenida Leandro N. Alem is one of the principal thoroughfares inBuenos Aires,Argentina, and a commercial nerve center of the city'sSan Nicolás andRetiro districts. It joinsAvenida del Libertador and Avenida Paseo Colón, its northern and southern continuation respectively.
By way of a beautification effort, ViceroyJuan José de Vértiz y Salcedo had a two-lane street built along what was then the shores of theRío de la Plata. Marking the eastern end of the city, the thoroughfare was landscaped withcottonwood trees (alamos, in Spanish), and was thus inaugurated in 1780 as thePaseo de la Alameda. The paseo became a popular weekend promenade, and its contiguous shores an unofficial riverfront park popular with bathers until an 1809 edict banned the practice for reasons of "moral terpitude."[1]
The frontage remained flood-prone, and in 1846, GovernorJuan Manuel de Rosas had a contention wall six blocks long built along the paseo. Inaugurated in March 1848 as the PaseoEncarnación Ezcurra (in honor of his wife), Rosas had it renamed thePaseo de Julio that October in honor of the Ninth of July, date of theArgentine Declaration of Independence (the road's southern half was renamedPaseo Colón, in honor ofChristopher Columbus, in 1857). AnEnglish Argentine investor, Edward Taylor, opened a pier along the promenade in 1855, and the flood-control walls were extended northwards toRecoleta, and south toSan Telmo, in subsequent works completed in 1865.[2]
Immigration in Argentina afterwards made the Paseo a veritable bazaar, in which Italiantrattorias, Frenchbistrots, Germanbeer halls, and Greek restaurants operated alongsidebrothels and seedy bars. The increasingly commercial desirability of the street, however, prompted the city to mandate in 1875 that all buildings along it be designed withporticos, a regulation still in force and one which forced the paseo's more precarious establishments to close.[3]
A sudden economic and population boom led the new President of Argentina,Julio Roca, to commission the development in 1881 of an ambitious port to supplement the recently developed facilities atLa Boca, in Buenos Aires' southside. Approved by theArgentine Congress in 1882 and financed by the prominentLondon-basedBarings Bank (the chief underwriter of Argentine bonds and investment, at the time), the project required thereclaiming of over 200 hectares (500 acres) of underwater land and was accompanied by the widening of the Paseo de Julio into aboulevard.[4] These improvements were capped by the installation of a decorative fountain on the median, for which an Argentine student ofAuguste Rodin's,Lola Mora, was commissioned. Unveiled in 1903, theFont of theNereids sparked moralist outrage over its nudeVenus, and the masterpiece was relocated to its presentPuerto Madero site in 1918.[2]
The improved boulevard saw the replacement of clapboard structures for upscale office buildings, mostly influenced byFrench architecture, and all distinguished by their archways. Among the most notable were the head offices of theNicolás Mihanovich Shipping Company andBunge y Born (then Argentina's leading grain exporter) and theBuenos Aires Stock Exchange's new headquarters (1916). Theelection that year of longtime universal male suffrage activist andUCR leaderHipólito Yrigoyen resulted in the boulevard's renaming in honor ofLeandro Alem, the founder of the centrist UCR, in a November 1919 ordinance. The UCR government completed the avenue's best-known landmark, theBuenos Aires Central Post Office, in 1928, though a 1930 coup d'état resulted in the return of conservative rule.
Changes in national politics did not rename or adversely impact the avenue, which was further widened and improved by Mayor José Guerrico in 1931, adding new medians to delimit bus and taxi lanes, and giving the boulevard its approximate current layout. The avenue's eclecticarchitectural selection was added to byrationalist buildings such as theComega (1930) and the 42-storyAlas (1950), which remained the tallest in Argentina until 1995. PresidentJuan Perón, who had the Alas built, ordered the avenue's stretch north ofPlaza San Martín renamedAvenida del Libertador in 1950, to commemorate the centennial of GeneralJosé de San Martín's death (San Martín is known as theLiberator of Argentina and Perú). Zoning changes enacted in 1966 allowed the development of the Catalinas Norte business park at the avenue's northern end, bringing with it theInternational style to the avenue's cityscape. Leandro Alem remains one of the city's most valuablecommercial real estate addresses, and its last undeveloped lots, municipal property totaling no more than 15,000 m2 (160,000 ft2) and estimated to be worth around US$80 million, were publicly proposed for sale in 2009.[5]
34°36′11″S58°22′13″W / 34.60306°S 58.37028°W /-34.60306; -58.37028