Here is a heavily illustrated (and architectural plan) book for the person who loves Buenos Aires, or who studies the city, or who merely walks its streets— or who does all three. Here is a visible Buenos Aires, the one built in the quite- long-ago, still powerfully present throughout the core city of the liberal era of 1880-1930.
The prologue admits with appropriate modesty that, esthetically, “in general, the works of this period do not possess virtues that would justify a too extensive study.” But the fifty-year period “formed a great part of the nation which we recognize today as ours.”
The larger part of the texts and photos is devoted to major public and private edifices in Buenos Aires, but other cities such as Córdoba and Rosario are represented, and some agricultural and industrial buildings and workers’ dwellings are depicted.
Three essays complement the photos (each of which is numbered and identified). The first essay, by Abelardo Levaggi, is a brief, standard history of the 1880-1930 era. The essays by Juna C. Mantero and Federico F. Ortiz deal with the relationships between architecture as theory and form, and the functional circumstances of the liberal years. Both essays relate their analyses to specific buildings among the photos but, unfortunately, without citing the number of the relevant photo. The photographic reproductions are good on the average.
An annotated biographical list of more than 500 architects, engineers, and builders of the period, and a short bibliography, complete this fascinating work.
