Florida Street
By evening, the pace relaxes as street performers flock to the area, including tango singers and dancers, living statues, and comedy acts.
The beginnings of Florida Street date back to the founding of Buenos Aires in 1580, when it was hewn as a primitive path uphill from the banks of the Río de la Plata.
Improved with boulders brought from Montevideo beginning in 1789, it became the first paved street in the city (a section of the original cobblestone pavement is displayed behind the entrance to the Cathedral Station on Diagonal Norte Avenue).
The Argentine National Anthem was first performed in 1813 at the Florida Street home of Mariquita Sánchez de Thompson, one of the city's most prominent citizens.
Vehicular traffic was barred during business hours in 1911 by request of the growing number of shop owners along Florida, and in 1913 the tram was dismantled to pedestrianize a section of the street.
Florida Street also became the address for a number of important corporate headquarters during the 1920s, including BankBoston Argentina and La Nación, the nation's leading news daily at the time.
Borges was an outspoken critic of the renovation work done on the street in 1970; he was blind, and the new arrangement of trash cans, planters, flower pots, and magazine stands was a serious accessibility risk for him.
Mayor Fernando de la Rúa had the textured concrete pavers along Florida replaced in 1999 with granite tiles laid in a decorative black-and-white pattern.
The first block, made somewhat wider than the remainder of the promenade by a city ordinance, is overlooked by the Mappin & Webb House (1911) and the post-modern former headquarters of the Banca Nazionale del Lavoro in Argentina (1989); both became branches of HSBC upon BNL's departure in 2006.
The corner of the intersection with Avenida Corrientes is overlooked by office high-rises, a Stock Center sporting goods megastore, and, for contrast, the former Elortondo Alvear residence (1880); the neo-Gothic mansion was converted into a Burger King in the 1990s.
Opened the same year, the Richmond Café next door was a favorite coffee house among local upscale patrons; Jorge Luis Borges, Graham Greene, and the Florida group of avant-garde writers were among the many literati who gathered there.
Founded in 1882 by future President Carlos Pellegrini, the institution governed horse racing in Argentina, and built the Palermo and San Isidro racecourses.
An incident on April 15, 1953, in which bombs were detonated at the Plaza de Mayo during one of President Juan Perón's many rallies, resulted in the destruction of the Beaux-Arts landmark by enraged Peronists, who viewed the aristocratic Jockey Club as a center of anti-Peronism.
The lot lay empty until the construction of Galería Jardín (1976), an office and retail complex designed by Mario Roberto Álvarez in a belated International Style.
The monumental building, designed by Roland le Vacher in 1888 to house the Au Bon Marché shops, also housed the National Museum of Fine Arts from 1896 to 1910, and thereafter the head office of the Buenos Aires and Pacific Railway; restored in 1991, its grand interiors also feature ceiling frescoes by Antonio Berni, Juan Carlos Castagnino, and other famed Argentine painters.
Following a lengthy legal struggle with the then-owner of the Harrods on Knightsbridge, Mohamed Al-Fayed, the department store closed in 1998, and since functions intermittently as a venue for cultural events, notably the Buenos Aires Tango Festival.
The street continues into the Juvenilia Esplanade, centered around a memorial to writer Esteban Echeverría, and overlooked by a French-inspired apartment building designed by Alejandro Bustillo.
Upscale Santa Fe Avenue merges into Florida Street along the Plaza Hotel, designed by Adolf Zucker for local banker Ernesto Tornquist and inaugurated in 1909.
Overlooking Plaza San Martín, the 120 m (390 ft) apartment building was designed in 1934 by the firm of Sánchez, Lagos and de la Tour for Corina Kavanagh.
