The Basque immigrant Pedro Luro (1820–90) was responsible for development of Mar del Plata, a village founded in 1874.

He had made his fortune in ranching, and envisioned developing the village as a port for shipping hides, meat, wool and grain to Buenos Aires.

As well as the wooden dock, by 1883 there was a stone wall on both banks of a 40 metres (130 ft) stretch of the Chacras creek so it could act as a port of shelter.

[2] The Dining Hall was built in 1890 in the block bounded by San Martín, Rivadavia, Boulevard Marítimo and Entre Ríos.

[2] To accommodate the many visitors to the grand hotel an annex was built later in the triangular block between Buenos Aires, Belgrano and Boulevard Marítimo.

[3] The Bristol Hotel opened on 8 January 1888, with invitations to attend the ceremony given to leading members of Buenos Aires society and national leaders.

[5] According to a contemporary report the guests arrived in what was then the village of Mar del Plata on a rainy and windy day, but all marvelled at the seascape.

[2] Other guests at the opening were Dardo Rocha, the Buenos Aires Governor Máximo Paz and Bartolomé Mitre.

[6] There is an unconfirmed report, published in 1930, by Caras y Caretas, that lists Nicholás II, then Tsarevich and part of the crew of a Russian school ship, as one of the guests.

[8] On the same year that the hotel was opened a large number of wooden casillas, or bathing machines, were erected on Playa Bristol, and began to be joined by a platform covered in awnings.

[9] On 15 December 1888 the Sociedad Anónima Bristol Hotel was authorised to construct a pier to provide access to the bathing machines.

[15] Working class tourists could use government grants to stay at holiday camps and union hotels, while the new middle-classes had a chance of acquiring a small property by the sea.

The new government that emerged from the 1943 Argentine coup d'état took moves to reduce rents and make eviction much harder, and set up a vacation office.

[3] By 1964 the hotel building was being operated by the Galería Gran Central Empire State limited company, which had divided it into units rented for commercial use.

[18] On 3 May 1974 sanitation workers performing an excavation in Calle Buenos Aires rediscovered the tunnel between the annex and the dining hall.

[3] The final stage of the demolition began in August 1974 with removal of the dome at San Martín and Entre Ríos.