Buenos Aires Central Business District

A representative image of pedestrians at the Microcentro

San Nicolás is one of the districts that shares most of the city and national government structure with neighboring Montserrat, and is home of the business district's financial center. It's seldom referred to as San Nicolás, but usually as The Center ("City Centre"), and the part east of the 9 de Julio Avenue is called Microcentro ("Micro-centre").

The growing importance of the area as a financial center was highlighted by the 1854 establishment of the Buenos Aires Stock Exchange. San Nicolás remains the financial center of Argentina, something underscored by the presence of the Central Bank and the National Bank, Argentina's largest. The rapid development of the Argentine economy after 1875 made itself evident in San Nicolás with the reclaiming of riverfront land by businessmen Francisco Seeber and Eduardo Madero, and the shore hitherto popular among washerwomen became the Paseo de Julio (today Leandro Alem Avenue).

The construction of Corrientes and Nueve de Julio Avenues in the 1930s further modernized San Nicolás, which had hitherto been limited in its development by its colonial grid of narrow streets. Florida Street, most of which is in San Nicolás, is the city's best-known pedestrianized street.[6] Its most discernible landmark is the Galerías Pacífico shopping arcade.[7]

The district is home to the Argentine Supreme Court, the Buenos Aires Metropolitan Cathedral, the Colón Opera House, headquarters of numerous leading Argentine firms, including Aerolíneas Argentinas, the Bank of the City of Buenos Aires, La Nación, Bunge y Born, Pérez Companc, the Macri Group, and most of the Buenos Aires Stock Exchange leaders, as well as the local offices of a number of international companies, such as BankBoston, BBVA, Citibank, Deutsche Bank, HSBC, IBM, Microsoft, Santander Bank, and Techint.[6]

The Avenida Leandro N. Alem in Retiro, featuring the Catalinas Norte business complex.

Retiro is one of the largest hubs of transportation services in Argentina. Local and long-distance rail service heading to the north originate from Estación Retiro (Retiro Terminal Station), and Retiro bus station is the city's main long-distance bus terminal. Subte line C of the Buenos Aires Metro system and numerous local public bus services serve Retiro, and this area is always teeming with commuters and traffic on weekdays.

The most important avenue linking Retiro and the CBD to commuters living in residential areas to the north is Avenida del Libertador, which becomes Leandro Alem Avenue past the Retiro Station. Other important thoroughfares in the Retiro section of the CBD are Córdoba, Santa Fe, and 9 de Julio Avenues.

The high-rise business district of Catalinas Norte, as well as the northern end of the Puerto Madero development, is located east of Leandro N. Alem Avenue. Opposite the Retiro train terminal, at the northern end of the CBD, is the leafy Plaza San Martín, surrounded by great palaces and hotels. The Retiro lowlands were once the training grounds for José de San Martín's Granaderos corps, and the modern-day Plaza San Martín features an equestrian statue honoring the hero of the Argentine War of Independence, as well as a memorial for the dead in the 1982 Falklands War. Facing the station is Argentine Air Force Square, where the Torre Monumental (formerly Torre de los Ingleses), a monument donated by the Anglo-Argentine community for the 1910 centennial celebrations, is located.[8]

Other significant landmarks opposite the Plaza are the Kavanagh Building, a reinforced concrete structure that when completed in 1936, was the tallest building in Latin America at 120 metres (394 ft). The nearby Brunetta Building (formerly headquarters for Olivetti's Latin American operations) was the first in Argentina to be built in the International style.[8]

Aerial view of the city's historical centre, in the borough of Monserrat.

Montserrat is located south of San Nicolás. The section of the Montserrat ward within the business district includes some of the most important buildings in Argentine Government and history, and was the site of the Buenos Aires Cabildo, the colonial town hall.

Avenue of May runs through the Montserrat district, connecting May Square and Congressional Plaza. A block or two south of the Plaza de Mayo, the older section of Montserrat begins. This was the location of the Illuminated Block, a Jesuit center of higher learning during the 18th century, and today home to the Colegio Nacional de Buenos Aires. This is Buenos Aires's oldest neighborhood and even today, very little of the cityscape there is less than a hundred years old (except along Belgrano Avenue), thereby making a nearly seamless transition to the likewise historic San Telmo district to the south.[9]

The district's led central location and its presence therein of much of Argentina's governmental structure led to monumental construction over the 1910s, notable among which are the Pink House, City Hall, the City Legislature, the Customs building, the offices of La Prensa (today the Buenos Aires House of Culture), the art-deco NH City Hotel (off the Plaza de Mayo), the Libertador Building (Ministry of Defense), and South Diagonal Avenue. Montserrat's western half was partitioned from the rest by the southward expansion of the massive Nueve de Julio Avenue around 1950.

The area became a largely bohemian quarter popular with tango performers and artists, as well as many who preferred the area's close proximity to the growing financial district to the north and its relatively low rent scale. Its rich architectural history and quiet, narrow streets have, as in neighboring San Telmo, helped lead to renewed tourist interest in Montserrat since around 1990.[9]

High-rise buildings in Puerto Madero.

Puerto Madero occupies a significant portion of the docklands and, as the newest of Buenos Aires's 48 boroughs, features the latest architectural trends in Argentina, as well as many tall apartment buildings and office blocks.

Originally developed by local businessman Eduardo Madero and designed by British engineer Sir John Hawkshaw, Puerto Madero was inaugurated in 1897. Its four docks were relegated to ancillary port functions after the 1926 completion of the New Port to the north, however, and became derelict. Beginning around 1994, however, local and foreign investment led to a massive revitalization effort, recycling and refurbishing the west side warehouses into upscale offices, lofts, restaurants, private universities and luxurious hotels. State-of-the-art multiplex cinemas, theatres, cultural centres, luxurious hotels and office and corporate buildings are located mostly in the eastern side of the district.[10]

Puerto Madero has been redeveloped with international flair, drawing interest from renown architects such as Santiago Calatrava, Norman Foster, César Pelli and Philippe Starck, among others. Today one of the trendiest boroughs in Buenos Aires, it has become the preferred address for growing numbers of young professionals and retirees, alike. Increasing property prices have also generated interest in the area as a destination for foreign buyers, particularly those in the market for premium investment properties.

The neighborhood's road network has been entirely rebuilt, especially in the east side. The layout of the east side consists currently of three wide boulevards running east–west crossed by the east side's main street, Juana Manso Avenue. The layout is completed with some other avenues and minor streets, running both east–west and north–south, and by several pedestrianised streets. All the streets of Puerto Madero are named after women. The Puente de la Mujer (Women's Bridge), designed in 2001 by Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava, is the newest link between the east and west docks of Puerto Madero.[10]

Puerto Madero represents the largest wide-scale urban project in the city of Buenos Aires, currently. Having undergone an impressive revival in merely a decade, it is one of the most successful recent waterfront renewal projects in the world.[11]

Numerous new residential high-rises of up to 50 stories have been built facing on the eastern half of Puerto Madero since 2000. These include El Mirador of Puerto Madero Towers, Renoir Towers, El Faro Towers, Chateau Tower of Puerto Madero, and the Mulieris Towers, among others. Notable non-residential structures include the Repsol-YPF Tower, the Hilton Buenos Aires, the Faena Hotel+Universe (one of a number of refurbished former Molinos Río de la Plata silos), and the Fortabat Art Collection museum building.