Raúl Aguilar Batres was a Guatemala

Guatemala

Guatemala is a country in Central America bordered by Mexico to the north and west, the Pacific Ocean to the southwest, Belize to the northeast, the Caribbean to the east, and Honduras and El Salvador to the southeast...

n civil engineer

Civil engineer

A civil engineer is a person who practices civil engineering; the application of planning, designing, constructing, maintaining, and operating infrastructures while protecting the public and environmental health, as well as improving existing infrastructures that have been neglected.Originally, a...

. He is the inventor of the street naming and house numbering

House numbering

House numbering is the system of giving a unique number to each building in a street or area, with the intention of making it easier to locate a particular building. The house number is often part of a postal address....

 conventions that are used in Guatemala City

Guatemala City

Guatemala City , is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Guatemala and Central America...

 and other cities in Guatemala.

Biography

Aguilar Batres was born December 1, 1910 in Guatemala City. He graduated from the Universidad Nacional in 1939 with a degree in civil engineering. He served as a university professor, as an assistant engineer on the Joint Commission on the boundary with Mexico, and in the Guatemala City Department of Planning. Aguilar Batres devised a system to rename and number the streets of Guatemala City, dividing the city into 25 zones. North-south streets were numbered as Avenidas and east-west streets as Calles. Hyphenated numbers were assigned to addresses to indicate distance in meters from a specified cross street. The system was introduced in 1947 and subsequently adopted by other cities such as Quetzaltenango

Quetzaltenango

Quetzaltenango, also commonly known by its indigenous name, Xelajú , or more commonly, Xela , is the second largest city of Guatemala. It is both the capital of Quetzaltenango Department and the municipal seat of Quetzaltenango municipality....

. Aguilar Batres died May 13, 1964.

Legacy

Calle de Amatitlán in Guatemala was renamed Calzada Raúl Aguilar Batres within a few years of Aguilar Batres' death. A monument, featuring a marble bust sculpted by Rodolfo Galeotti Torres

Rodolfo Galeotti Torres

Rodolfo Galeotti Torres was a high profile Guatemalan sculptor.-Biography:Rodolfo Galeotti Torres was born on March 4, 1912 in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala. He served as director of the Escuela Nacional de Artes Plásticas Rodolfo Rodríguez Padilla...

was created in 1970 and placed on Calzada Aguilar Batres in zone 11 of Guatemala City.

Further reading

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