Raúl Aguilar Batres (December 1, 1910 – May 13, 1964) was a Guatemalan civil engineer. He is the inventor of the street naming and

house numbering House numbering is the system of giving a unique number to each building in a street or area, with the intention of making it easier to locate a particular building. The house number is often part of a postal address. The term describes the num ...

conventions that are used in

Guatemala City Guatemala City ( es, Ciudad de Guatemala), known locally as Guatemala or Guate, is the capital and largest city of Guatemala, and the most populous urban area in Central America. The city is located in the south-central part of the country, ne ...

and other cities in Guatemala.

Biography

Aguilar Batres was born December 1, 1910 in Guatemala City. He graduated from the ''Universidad Nacional'' in 1939 with a degree in civil engineering. He served as a university professor, as an assistant engineer on the Joint Commission on the boundary with Mexico, and in the Guatemala City Department of Planning. Aguilar Batres devised a system to rename and number the streets of Guatemala City, dividing the city into 25 zones. North-south streets were numbered as ''Avenidas'' and east-west streets as ''Calles''. Hyphenated numbers were assigned to addresses to indicate distance in meters from a specified cross street. The system was introduced in 1947 and subsequently adopted by other cities such as

Quetzaltenango Quetzaltenango (, also known by its Maya name Xelajú or Xela ) is both the seat of the namesake Department and municipality, in Guatemala. The city is located in a mountain valley at an elevation of above sea level at its lowest part. It m ...

. Aguilar Batres died May 13, 1964.

Legacy

Calle de Amatitlán in Guatemala was renamed Calzada Raúl Aguilar Batres within a few years of Aguilar Batres' death. A monument, featuring a marble bust sculpted by Rodolfo Galeotti Torres was created in 1970 and placed on Calzada Aguilar Batres in zone 11 of Guatemala City.

Biography

Legacy

See also

References

Further reading