Landmarks | Wander Argentina

Luna Park: Buenos Aires’ Historic Downtown Stadium

Luna Park, that art deco building downtown with the neon sign is Argentina’s answer to Madison Square Gardens and on any given Saturday night in Buenos Aires the 80-year old stadium still might be the place putting on the best show in town.

The Palacio de los Deportes, or ‘Sports Palace’, as it’s called is part of Buenos Aires’ history in the worlds of athletics, entertainment and beyond.

Luna_Park por jorge — photo: Jorge, Yanni fan

It’s here where Evita Duarte met Juan Perón, the world’s first ‘telephony’ transmission occurred and Diego Maradona had his 1989 wedding party.

It’s also the place where, in 1950 the Argentina team won – for the only time—the FIBA World Basketball Championship, beating out the United States.

‘The King of Tango,’ Carlos Gardel and the ‘Man’s Man of Tango,’ Julio Sosa were honored with funerals there as well as legendary heavyweight boxer, Ringo Bonavena, who is today buried in Recoleta cemetery.

Luna Park’s Sports and Concerts

monzon-briscoe — Carlos Monzón looks at the clock during a 1967 Luna Park fight against ‘Bad’ Bennie Briscoe

Boxing has played a major part in the building of the Luna Park legacy, as well as other indoor sports such as tennis, cycling, volleyball, fencing and wrestling.

The venue is also known for putting on blockbuster concert events ranging from classical operas and ballets to the latest stars from pop and rock.

Famous international names to have appeared there through the years include James Brown, Frank Sinatra, Luciano Pavarotti and even Pope John Paul II.

The stories of Argentine stars such as boxer Carlos Monzón, tango accordion player, Anibal Troilo, folk singer Mercedes Sosa and rock group Sui Géneris are all also inextricably intertwined with the Luna Park folklore.

Luna Park’s Early Years & Dark Past

The stadium’s history stretches back to 1912 when the name Luna Park first appeared in Buenos Aires.

Frederick Ingersoll, the American responsible for constructing over 40 Luna Parks around the world, designed the venue based on his original Coney Island concept.

During its first 20 years Luna Park was an amusement park and open-air venue located in the spot where the famous Obelisk now rises over 9 de Julio Avenue.

It hosted live theater, music events, and other novelties such as the first ever ‘radiotelephony’ transmission on September 14, 1923.

That broadcast allowed the boxing fans of Buenos Aires to listen to the famous bout between Jack Dempsey and Argentina’s Luis Angel Firpo, known as the ‘wild bull of the pampas,’ live from the New York Polo Grounds.

That historic fight was the first time that a Latin American fighter had a chance at the World Heavy Weight Title.

In 1932 the original Luna Park was demolished as the city began acquisition of property around 9 de Julio Avenue.

The Luna Park name was overtaken by Italian businessmen Ismael Pace and former amateur boxer, José Lectoure and relocated 10 blocks away to its current location, which takes up the square between Corrientes, Lavalle, Bouchard and Madero streets, in the heart of the downtown area and on the edge of the high-rent Puerto Madero neighborhood.

On inauguration day, March 5, 1932 Luna Park hosted an outdoor festival of boxing, setting the pugilistic tone of the new venue. Two years after its relocation, Lectoure and Pace had earned enough money to convert the stadium into the roofed complex it is today.

Nazi Rallies in Buenos Aires

In the late 1930’s, at the behest of the pre-Peronist military government, World War II Nazi rallies were held at Luna Park creating extraordinary scenarios within that looked more like Berlin than Buenos Aires.

A 1938 Nazi rally attended by an astounding 20,000 included the participation of important politicians including Roberto J. Noble, the founder of Argentina’s largest newspaper, Clarín.

Luna Park Today

After Pace and Lectoure both died in the 1950’s, management of Luna Park was passed down to Lectoure’s nephew, Juan Carlos.

Juan Carlos, or ‘Tito’ Lectoure was an inexperienced twenty-year-old real estate agent until that point, but it is his name that would become synonymous with Buenos Aires’ Luna Park for the next fifty-odd years, until his passing in 2002.

Tito, a boxing fan from childhood, continued to develop the stadium into the focal point of the sport in Argentina. He enhanced his own role from arena manager into that of big fight promoter, bringing in raw boxing talent from all over the country to train in the attached gymnasium, before eventually providing the fighters with the stage to make their names and reputations before the public.

Tito set about remodeling the stadium so that its standing-room capacity reached 23, 500 people in 1960, making it the largest covered stadium in South America of the era.

The crowds flocked in, feasting on spectacles of quality boxing that could only be matched in a few other hallowed locales around the world, most notably, New York’s Madison Square Garden, and Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City.

The reputations that were forged in those golden years of Argentine pugilism include such world-renowned champions as the aforementioned Oscar ‘Ringo’ Bonavena, Juan Roldán and Horacio Accavallo.

Even Muhammad Ali shuffled across the ring there.

‘Tito’ never forgot the showbiz roots of his venue either, and provided the general public with many a special night out, bringing in acts as diverse as the Bolshoi Ballet, Milan’s La Scala Orchestra, Ricky Martin, Oasis, the Moscow Circus, the Harlem Globetrotters and the obligatory ‘Holiday on Ice’.

Luna Park remains under the management of the Lectoure family, and the current owners have maintained the customs established by their forebears.

Boxing matches at Luna Park today, replete with rowdy crowds and some of the world’s most entertaining hecklers, continue the fight-night tradition which started back in 1923 with the broadcast of the Dempsey-Firpo fight.

Although Luna Park is not particularly celebrated for its acoustics, big international rock acts from the U.S. and Europe such as the Pixies, Smashing Pumpkins and Norah Jones still perform there when they tour Argentina.

Luna Park Event Info and Tickets

In 2007 Argentina’s Secretary of Culture declared Luna Park a Historic National Monument. The decree proclaimed that, “As the stage for sporting events, concerts and political gatherings for more than 80 years, Luna Park holds a central place in the imagination of Argentines.”

Tickets to events can be purchased by phone or online with additional service fees at Ticket Portal (linked below) or in person from the stadium’s ticket office. Check their website for upcoming events.

—by Dan Colasimone

Luna Park
Av. Madero 420
Downtown Buenos Aires
Show info: 5279-5279

Ticket office hours:

Mon—Fri: 10 am-7pm
Sat: 12pm-7pm
Sun: from 2 pm (only if there is an event)

Tickets online and via phone:
Ticket Portal
Tel: 5353-0606

El Ateneo Grand Splendid: South America’s Most Beautiful Bookstore

Buenos Aires is a city full of not-to-missed architectural attractions. Among them is South America’s most opulent bookstore, El Ateneo Grand Splendid. This book lover’s palace located in the old Grand Splendid Theater retains all the decadence of an Italian opera house and is the ideal place to revel in Buenos Aires’ celebrated literary tradition.

The amphitheater’s former 1,050-person seating area now contains El Ateneo’s 120,000 book titles. The beautiful central dome retains the original Romantic-style frescos by Italian, Nazareno Orlandi celebrating the end of the First World War.

The theater boxes are intact and are fitted with comfy chairs that invite visitors to lounge perusing book selections on a rainy afternoon.

The Splendid’s stage remains encased by thick burgundy curtains, and now serves as the bookstore’s pleasant but pricey café. A live pianist performs on stage in the afternoons and, thanks to the great acoustics, can be heard throughout the store.

The Grand Splendid Radio

Max Glücksmann, a pioneer in Argentina’s phonographic and film industry, constructed the 2000 sq. meter theater in 1919. The Jewish-Austrian immigrant arrived in Buenos Aires in 1890. Beginning with a humble AR$50 per month salary in a photography studio, he went on to create a huge musical and film legacy honoring his adopted country.

With the fortune he amassed in the first 20 years of his career he contracted two rather unknown architects, Peró and Torres Armengol to design a new theater in the neighborhood that was then known as ‘Saint Germain Porteño.’

In 1924 Glücksmann founded his own radio station, Radio Splendid in the upper offices of the building. He produced cutting edge recordings of the channel’s live programs and from there launched Discos Glücksmann, a record label that was responsible for spreading the sounds of tango legends such as Lola Membrives and Roberto Firpo throughout Europe. Enrique Delfino, another tango great who worked with Glücksmann, even authored a 1922 piano piece, ‘Grand Splendid,’ in honor of the theater.

A fresco in El Ateneo Gran Splendid Bookstore in Buenos Aires — One of the ceiling frescoes in El Ateneo Gran Splendid Bookstore, Buenos Aires

By 1926 Glücksmann’s interest in the moving picture industry inspired him to convert the Grand Splendid into Buenos Aires’ most luxurious film house.

At first, the movie theater featured silent films accompanied by live tango orchestras. In 1929 the first moving picture with sound in Buenos Aires, a love story called ‘La Divina Dama‘ (The Divine Lady) debuted here in an event that drew Buenos Aires’ most fashionable citizens and paparazzi of the day.

In the early 1970’s Teatro Grand Splendid was once again briefly converted back into a theater. The last live performance in 1973 starred Mirtha Legrand, one of Argentina’s most enduring starlets. Legrand had a long relationship with the theater and Radio Splendid— in the 1940’s she and her sister, Silvia, co-hosted a radio show on the station, ‘El Club de Los Amigos’ (The Friendship Club).

The Birth of El Ateneo Gran Splendid Bookstore

After the last curtain fell, the Grand Splendid was then converted back into a movie house until 1991. The last film was shown here was Sam Mendes’ ‘American Beauty.’ At the time, Argentina’s economy was suffering and the building was destined for the wrecking ball until the Ilhsa Group, owner of the Argentine Ateneo bookstore chain, saved the day.

At the end of 2000, after extensive restorations totaling AR$3 million, the theater was reopened as El Ateneo Grand Splendid. It quickly gained recognition as one of the world’s most majestic bookstores.

In 2008 Britain’s Guardian newspaper named El Ateneo as the second most beautiful bookstore in the world (first on the list is Holland’s, Boekhandel Selexyz Dominicanen, set in an 800 year-old church). National Geographic named El Ateneo the world’s most beautiful bookstore in 2019.

The flagship store of El Ateneo bookstore is a set in an old theater — Buenos Aires’ bookstore converted from a theater. El Ateneo Grand Splendid /photo: David Wilbanks

El Ateneo gives a nod to the Grand Splendid’s musical tradition with a decent selection of music at its flagship store. On the 2nd floor are classical and jazz music CD’s and in the basement a popular music section. The lateral hallways on the upper floors showcase black and white images of the Grand Splendid and the tango greats that performed here in its heyday, including Carlos Gardel, Francisco Canaro and Ignacio Corsini.

There are 4,000 non-Spanish titles here but the English language section of the store doesn’t offer much besides pulp fiction thrillers and romance novels. A few English textbooks are also scattered throughout the store. Those looking for good English reading material for the road will find a better selection at some of the city’s other bookstores, such as Kel, Walrus Books and Libros del Pasaje.

El Ateneo is a chain with 40 locations throughout the country, but the Recoleta venue is the most visited with an average 3,000 people passing through daily to gawk at the stunning architecture.

→ Check out our Buenos Aires city tours, and ask about a private an architecture tour that includes El Ateneo.

El Ateneo Grand Splendid
1860 Sante Fe Avenue
Recoleta/Barrio Norte
Tel: 4813-4154

•Hours: Mon-Fri 10am —7pm
Fri & Sat: 10 am —12am
Sun: 9 am—10 pm

Florida Street: Galería Güemes Through the Years

Galería Güemes is another art nouveau jewel on downtown’s Florida Street, but you wouldn’t know it from glancing at it street side. After a 1971 fire caused serious damage to the exterior of the 1915 building it was modernized and rebuilt with a rather unfortunate glass façade, but the first floor retains the beautiful interior details including a stained glass central dome, granite walls, arched ceilings and detailed ironwork.

The decadent gallery was designed by famed Italian architect, Francesco Gianotti, known for another Buenos Aires’ landmark, Confiteria del Molino, still standing abandoned across from the Congress building. For many years Güemes was considered Buenos Aires first ‘skyscraper,’ standing at 87 meters high.

Known as ‘Paseo Florida‘ to old timers, many notables have passed through Galería Güemes through the years. An apartment in the building was once the home to the writer and aviator Antoine de Saint-Expuréy. Writer Julio Cortázar was known to hang out here, after the prime downtown shopping destination became home to porno shops and cheap ‘cabarets’ as mentioned in his 1966 story ‘El Otro Cielo’ (The Other Sky), a portion of which is translated here:

…”The Güemes arcade is ambiguous territory where, for a long time now, I’ve gone to shake off my childhood as if it were a used suit.

Since the year 1928, the Güemes arcade was a treasure cavern in which the world of sin and mint lozenges deliciously intermingled, where they shouted out the headlines of the evening newspaper with crimes on all the pages and lights burned in the basement gallery, where they showed forbidden realistic films. …

I remember most of all the smells and sounds, something akin to expectation and anxiety, and the little store where one could purchase magazines with naked women and ads for fake manicurists and I was already sensitive to that false sky of stucco and dirty skylights, to that artificial night that ignored the stupidity of the day and of the sun just outside.”

Today, Galería Güemes is family friendly once again with 24 PG-rated stores to peruse including a chocolate shop, leatherware outlet and a wine cellar. On the second floor you’ll find Granix, one of Buenos Aires’ oldest vegetarian restaurants. In the building’s lovely basement auditorium, the Astor Piazzolla Theatre, tango great Carlos Gardel performed in 1917. Today it hosts one of the most celebrated Las Vegas-style tango dinner shows in the city.

In April 2010, Galería Güemes’s 14th floor lookout point was reopened to the public after many years in disrepair. Throughout Argentina’s 1920s heyday this was the highest man-made point in the country. The public came here to get sweeping 360-degree views of the city with the aid of a huge coin-operated binocular. Today the views are certainly more urban but on a very clear day you can see the coast of Uruguay with the aid of binoculars.

• Galería Güemes
Florida 165
Look-out point: Mon-Fri 9a.m-12p.m & 3 p.m.—5:30 p.m

• Piazzolla Tango

Lookout visits: Monday-Friday 9:30-12:00 & 3:00-5:30
Cost: AR$

continue reading:

→Florida Street—The Gath and Chavez Building

→Florida Street at Diagonal Norte

→Galeria Mitre — Baroque Architecture on Florida Street

Galería Mitre—Baroque Architecture on Florida St.

Galería Mitre, at Florida St. 343, with its Jesuit-inspired baroque style is one of the most ornate and unique buildings along downtown Buenos Aires’ pedestrian mall.

The unusual moldings of the building’s façade are inspired by indigenous art from the northern regions, where the Jesuits had many missions beginning in the 1580’s. The moldings are perfectly conserved, only marred by the big green sign for it’s current occupant, Falabella, a Chilean department store that opened here in 2005 and has three locations along Florida Street.

The 6,000 square meter space was built in 1930 to house one of the nation’s largest newspapers, La Nación. The architect, Estanislao Pirovano, also constructed what is today the Evita Museum.

Pirovano is noted for introducing both the Gothic Revival and Tudor architectural styles to Buenos Aires.

Today Galería Mitre is modernized inside but it has a nice central patio to stop and enjoy a snack.

continue reading:

→ Florida St.—The Gath and Chavez Building

→ The World’s Most Elegant Burger King

Galería Mitre/Falabella
Florida St. 343
Downtown

The World’s Most Elegant Burger King

All along Buenos Aires downtown Florida Street visitors will find beautiful historic buildings occupied by multinational corporate chains—it’s an unfortunate reality for traditionalists but these buildings, unlike the Naval Center and Argentine Rural Society, are some of the most accessible for viewing.

The most notable example is found on the corner of Corrientes and Florida — the neo-gothic former residence of the Elortondo Alvear family, constructed in 1880.

Since the 1990’s the Venetian-style building is occupied by perhaps the world’s most elegant Burger King fast food restaurant.

“It’s a clash of cultures but at least they didn’t demolish the building,” says Buenos Aires’ tour guide and University of Buenos Aires professor, Eduardo Mallorens.

The burger joint doesn’t look like too much from outside, although there was a modest attempt to replicate the building’s former façade. The ground floor interior was also destroyed but on the second floor visitors can gaze upward to get an idea of the building’s former grandeur.

WA-corrientesyflorida-alvear BK ayer — The former Alvear family property in the 1980's, before its original facade was destroyed.

Even if you’re a vegetarian, or you came to Argentina to eat steak– not hamburgers, it’s worth slipping in and climbing up the grand stairway to the second story. There you’ll see a huge central dome with a five-panel leaded-glass ceiling and beautiful moldings and frescos in each separate room of the dining area.

The high profile corner lot is also noted as the site of the former home of Ana Díaz, who arrived in the country in 1580 as one of Argentina’s first female settlers. She remains a quixotic figure in Argentine history.

→ cont. reading: Galería Mitre—Baroque Architecture on Florida St.

← cont. from: French Style Architecture on Florida St. —The Argentine Rural Society

Burger King/Former Alvear Family Home/Ana Díaz Homestead
Corrientes 602
Downtown