May Avenue ( es, Avenida de Mayo) is an avenue in

Buenos Aires Buenos Aires ( or ; ), officially the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires ( es, link=no, Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires), is the capital and primate city of Argentina. The city is located on the western shore of the Río de la Plata, on South ...

, capital of

Argentina Argentina (), officially the Argentine Republic ( es, link=no, República Argentina), is a country in the southern half of South America. Argentina covers an area of , making it the second-largest country in South America after Brazil, th ...

. It connects the

Plaza de Mayo The Plaza de Mayo (; en, May Square) is a city square and main foundational site of Buenos Aires, Argentina. It was formed in 1884 after the demolition of the Recova building, unifying the city's Plaza Mayor and Plaza de Armas, by that time kn ...

with

Congressional Plaza Congressional Plaza (Spanish: ''Plaza del Congreso'') is a public park facing the Argentine Congress in Buenos Aires. The plaza is part of a 3 hectare (7.5 acre) open space comprising three adjoining plazas to the east of the Congress building. ...

, and extends in a west–east direction before merging into Rivadavia Avenue.

History and overview

Built on an initiative by Mayor

Torcuato de Alvear Torcuato de Alvear y Saenz de la Quintanilla ( Montevideo, 1822 – Buenos Aires, 1890) was a 19th-century Argentine conservative politician. He was the son of soldier and statesman Carlos María de Alvear and father of Marcelo Torcuato de Alvea ...

, work began in 1885 and was completed in 1894. The avenue is often compared with ''La Gran Vía'' in

Madrid Madrid ( , ) is the capital and most populous city of Spain. The city has almost 3.4 million inhabitants and a Madrid metropolitan area, metropolitan area population of approximately 6.7 million. It is the Largest cities of the Europ ...

, although the Spanish avenue was built later (1910). It is also compared to those in Paris or Barcelona due to its sophisticated buildings of art nouveau, neoclassic and eclectic styles. The avenue was named in honor of the

May Revolution The May Revolution ( es, Revolución de Mayo) was a week-long series of events that took place from May 18 to 25, 1810, in Buenos Aires, capital of the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata. This Spanish colony included roughly the terri ...

of 1810 (the event that led to Argentine Independence). The site of the assembly that touched off the revolution (the

Buenos Aires Cabildo The Cabildo of Buenos Aires ( es, Cabildo de Buenos Aires) is the public building in Buenos Aires that was used as seat of the town council during the colonial era and the government house of the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata. Today the bu ...

) was partially demolished in 1888 to make way for the avenue's entry into

. The avenue's layout, built through existing urban blocks instead of via the widening of a parallel street, was designed by the municipal public works director,

Juan Antonio Buschiazzo Juan Antonio Buschiazzo (October 29, 1845May 13, 1917) was an Italian-born Argentine architect and engineer who contributed to the modernisation of Buenos Aires, Argentina in the 1880s and to the construction of the city of La Plata, the new cap ...

. Buschiazzo was also commissioned to design a number of the buildings along the avenue (among them, City Hall) after Mayor

Miguel Cané Miguel Cané (27 January 1851 – 5 September 1905) was an Argentinian writer, lawyer, academic, journalist and politician. Cané was born in Montevideo, Uruguay, where his family was exiled. He moved to Argentina at the age of two following th ...

enacted strict architectural zoning laws for the area facing the new thoroughfare. The recession caused by the

Panic of 1890 Panic is a sudden sensation of fear, which is so strong as to dominate or prevent reason and logical thinking, replacing it with overwhelming feelings of anxiety and frantic agitation consistent with an animalistic fight-or-flight reactio ...

led to delays and a rollback of many of the more ornate plans for the avenue, which was inaugurated on July 9, 1894 (the 78th anniversary of Independence). Mayor Cané's strict regulations initially governed architecture along the 30 m (99 ft)-wide avenue, which limited the height of real estate facing it to 24 m (79 ft). The Barolo Tower was the first to be granted an exception to this and since then, numerous office buildings have been built in excess of these stipulations (though they remain largely an exception). The Avenida de Mayo was the site of the first

Buenos Aires Metro The Buenos Aires Underground ( es, Subterráneo de Buenos Aires, links=no), locally known as Subte (), is a rapid transit system that serves the area of the city of Buenos Aires, Argentina. The first section of this network (Plaza de Mayo–Pla ...

stations; opened in 1913, these were the first outside the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a subcontinent of Eurasia and it is located entirel ...

. The avenue itself underwent its only significant alteration in 1937, when one block were demolished to make way for the perpendicular Avenida 9 de Julio (the widest in the world). Seeking to halt future demolitions along the avenue, Decree 437/97 of the National Executive Branch declared the Avenue a National Historic Site in 1997 and, as a result, the aesthetics of the buildings, billboards, and marquees could not be changed. Any modifications must be approved by the National Commission of Monuments and Historic Sites (''Comisión Nacional de Monumentos y Lugares Históricos'')

Gallery

External links

Asociación Amigos de la Avenida de Mayo
{{Authority control Streets in Buenos Aires, Mayo