Buenos Aires History

Fans of the history of Buenos Aires might be interested that fellow Buenos Aires expat blogger Robert Wright has recently been writing some excellent posts in his Line of Sight, about what could have been and what might be in Buenos Aires, in addition to his earlier wonderful picture series about ‘Buenos Aires then and now’, for the Estacion Retiro, Galeria Guemes, and Diagonal Norte, to name a few.

Now, I will never compete with the sheer knowledge Robert has about the history of the city, but I’d like to add at least one thing that might be of interest to those that have a penchant for the history of our great (adopted) city.

Recently, Google announced that the latest release of their ‘Google Earth’ maps program has gone ‘4D’, by adding an interesting choice of new dimension - the past, as noted here in Spanish, and here in English. They have done so by adding old maps of certain cities as ‘layers’ over the satellite maps of the earth, so that you can compare past and present.

Luckily enough, Buenos Aires, Argentina is one of the historical maps included, with a version from 1892 being viewable over the current real-life BA:

Check it out by downloading the latest (free) version of Google Earth and installing it. To use this cool feature, go to the Layers panel on the bottom left, expand ‘Featured Content’, and then ‘Rumsey Historical Maps’, and select ‘Buenos Aires 1892′, to see how much the city of Buenos Aires has grown since 1892 - all that green space!