This Monday the Active Heritage Civil Association will be presented at the Municipality of Montevideo to request that the demolition of a house (of a census located on Bulevar Artigas) be stopped and that the real estate project in progress be reformulatedin order to protect what is understood is “A work of very high value and part of the architectural skin of the city”.
This highlighted The Observer Eric Schaffner, president of Patrimonio Activo, an architecture student and restorer of buildings in Montevideo and Buenos Aires, who said that the concern is shared especially by Alfredo Ghierra, another defender of the capital’s heritage riches, who was even the one who found out about it. adversity.
He reported that If the administration does not receive it, it will leave a note as proof of the claim for the “serious omission” of the departmental government.
During the last few days, neighbors and members of organizations that promote the protection of architectural heritage in the country’s capital and in the rest of the country have complained about the unexpected and rapid demolition of two hundred-year-old buildings.
One is a style house art decobuilt around the year 1930, where the Israeli embassy operated for many years.
The other, the most worrying case, Eric pointed out, is a stately house built around 1920, which was a petit hotel and is located at Bulevar Artigas 1565, Ana Monterroso de Lavalleja corner.
What happened is, he said, “a lack of action and protection that is the sole responsibility of the Municipality of Montevideo, which did not abide by clear departmental regulations” (see the decree below).
Planning Plan pending
Willy Rey, general director of the National Cultural Heritage Commission, explained to The Observer that this commission has no interference in these two cases, because They are not properties declared as a National Historic Monument. “These are very interesting assets that deserve protection, but they do not reach the hierarchy of National Historic Monuments,” he added.
To declare them like this, the only existing law must be considered, which poses a very rigorous selection, with demands to be met in a very well-founded way.
King said that who does have instruments to act is the mayorbased on the permanent special commissions.
He recalled that some 20 years ago he was a consultant for the Pocitos neighborhood Management Plan, in what has to do with its patrimonial inventory, and that then all the registers facing Bulevar Artigas from the boulevard to the Obelisk were included “in a line of protection, but the mayor’s office has not yet approved the land use plan for Pocitos, therefore the inventory never had legal use; if it were to be approved, this phenomenon would not happen”.
Eric Schaffner
The house is on Bulevar Artigas almost Ana Monterroso de Lavalleja.
salvage as much as possible
The demolition is well advanced, halfway, but “We are in time to stop it”remarked Schaffner, for which immediate action is desired from an inspection body of the mayor, as soon as the weekend passes.
the antecedent
Something similar happened a year and a half ago with a house in Roque Graseras almost Bulevar España. It was also a property protected by regulations, but the mayor authorized the demolition and after the claim the damage was stopped and the private developer reformulated the real estate project, which advanced but contemplating the total respect of the façade and a good part of the original construction , that is, what had not been demolished.
Schaffner explained that the Departmental Board, in a 2021 decree, prepared a list of properties that are protected, that is, protected, including those first large residences on Bulver Artigas, a set of buildings among which is also, for example, the house where the embassy of Brazil works“works of high quality, created by French architects who emigrated to the Río de la Plata or using projects that came from Europe”.
The aforementioned houses, indicated Schaffner, “They are invaluable, they cannot be replicated, they are part of the value of the city, these are highly appreciated mansions, which give Bulevar Artigas that stately air, they are a non-renewable resource that must be protected by the authorities”he concluded.
