Associations of deaf people, accompanied by the Observatory for the Right to the City, presented a protection before the Buenos Aires Justice so that the Ceci Palacelocated in Villa Devoto, remain as the headquarters of the school for children with hearing disabilitiesand is not assigned by the Government of the City of Buenos Aires to the official plan of the Wine District.
The collective action fell to the Contentious, Administrative and Tax Court 17 and was promoted by the Argentine Association of the Deaf, the Argentine Confederation of the Deaf, the Argentine Association of the Deaf and the Argentine Union of the Deaf.
The measure contemplates the historic building located in Lincoln 4305where one of the school’s headquarters worked until last year Bartholomew Ayrolo for deaf people, and that since February 2022 ceased to belong to the orbit of the Ministry of Education and passed to the Directorate of Administration of State Assets.
The presentation requested that “all administrative or administrative acts aimed at changing the historical destiny and educational use of the Ceci Palace be declared null and void, and that the building be used exclusively for the Ayrolo school.”
Currently, the Government of Buenos Aires is executing a plan to remodel the building, which was built in 1913, due to the state of deterioration that the building registered, to reopen its doors in 2023 as a space open to the community, with which You will no longer have only the educational function you registered until closing.
According to the neighbors, the decision of the Buenos Aires management is linked to the creation of the wine districtan official plan that seeks promote wine and tourism activity in that area of the Cityfor which “the Ceci Palace will be of fundamental importance, given that it will be its headquarters”.
They added that the act of transfer of the building from one dependency to another “involved the beginning of the change of destination and use given to the property”, given that “from education it passed to economic development within the framework of a productive district”,
“Article 63 of the City Constitution establishes the call for a mandatory public hearing before modifications of use or ownership of public assetss”, they warned, denouncing the absence of this instance of citizen participation in the case of the Ceci Palace.
On the other hand, from the Instagram account “PalacioCeciAyrolo”, which brings together neighbors and members of the school community, they reported that on Monday night “valuable and irreplaceable pieces of the Palace” such as “luminaires and bronze fittings” were stolen.
“This is how the Property Administration Directorate takes care of it. Abandoned, without security and surrounded by scaffolding that facilitates entry”, they warned in the publication that was accompanied by images that account for the missing pieces.
The Palace was built in 1913 by the engineer Alfredo Ceci, who lived there for 25 years, until he rented it to the Ministry of Education to serve as the home of Professor Ayrolo, who stayed there until his death in February 1942, and since then the place functioned as a school for boys and girls with hearing impairment and language disorders.
The facilities, in their beginnings, were property of the National State, which expropriated it from the Ceci family and, in 1996, it passed into the hands of the City of Buenos Aires under the purview of the Ministry of Education, already showing signs of deterioration due to its age. the facilities, for which, in 2015, the classrooms were moved to a new adjoining building, while the administrative offices of the school institution remained there.
