Mercado de Abasto, Buenos Aires
Five colossal Deco vaults over the market of Gardel’s barrio – the wholesale cathedral of fruit reborn as the Abasto shopping centre.
At a glance
- Type
- Former wholesale market, now shopping centre
- Period
- 1931-1934
- Style
- Art Deco (monumental concrete)
- Location
- Avenida Corrientes 3200, Buenos Aires, Argentina
- Coordinates
- -34.6037, -58.4107
- Architects
- Jose Luis Delpini, Viktor Sulcic, Raul Bes
Overview
The Mercado de Abasto stacked five giant parabolic vaults of reinforced concrete along Corrientes in 1934 – the wholesale fruit-and-vegetable cathedral of Buenos Aires, its Deco arches among the boldest concrete spans of the decade anywhere. Around it spread the barrio of Carlos Gardel, the tango’s voice, whose statue and museum-house keep the neighborhood his.
History
The market provisioned the city until 1984, when the central market moved and the vaults fell silent over a declining barrio. The 1998-99 conversion to the Abasto de Buenos Aires mall – preserving structure and facade – re-anchored the district; the Gardel house-museum, the tango milongas, and the kosher food hall (the world’s only kosher McDonald’s among them, serving the historic Jewish Once district) renew the mixture Gardel sang.
Architecture and Design
Delpini’s engineering carried market floors on arches spanning 40 metres with Deco ribs and lanterns – functional monumentality the conversion glazed and escalatored without losing the nave-like interior light. The Corrientes front’s stepped arches remain the barrio’s gateway image.
Cultural significance
The Abasto is Buenos Aires’ great adaptive-reuse story and tango’s home ground – Gardel’s smiling statue, the festival’s stages, and the immigrant barrio’s layers within the food chain’s old cathedral.
Visiting today
The mall opens daily; the Museo Casa Carlos Gardel two blocks away and evening milongas complete the Abasto circuit.
Getting there
Carlos Gardel subte station (line B) exits into the complex on Corrientes.
Sources and resources
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