Wilde, Buenos Aires
Encyclopedia
Wilde is a town in the Avellaneda Partido
Avellaneda Partido
Avellaneda is a partido in Buenos Aires Province, Argentina. It has an area of 55.17 km²  and a population of 340,985 . Its capital is the city of Avellaneda....

 of Buenos Aires Province
Buenos Aires Province
The Province of Buenos Aires is the largest and most populous province of Argentina. It takes the name from the city of Buenos Aires, which used to be the provincial capital until it was federalized in 1880...

, Argentina
Argentina
Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...

. It forms part of the Greater Buenos Aires
Greater Buenos Aires
Greater Buenos Aires is the generic denomination to refer to the megalopolis comprising the autonomous city of Buenos Aires and the conurbation around it, over the province of Buenos Aires—namely the adjacent 24 partidos or municipalities—which nonetheless do not constitute a single administrative...

 urban agglomeration
Agglomeration
In the study of human settlements, an urban agglomeration is an extended city or town area comprising the built-up area of a central place and any suburbs linked by continuous urban area. In France, INSEE the French Statistical Institute, translate it as "Unité urbaine" which means continuous...

.

Wilde is the most populous district in Avellaneda, with 65,881 inhabitants. Originating with the estancia
Estância
Estância is a municipality located in the Brazilian state of Sergipe. Its population was 62,218 and its area is 642 km². The city is the seat of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Estância....

 founded by Luis Gaitán around 1600, the settlement was the site of the first salthouse
Salt-cured meat
Salt-cured meat or salted meat, for example bacon and kippered herring, is meat or fish preserved or cured with salt. Salting, either with dry salt or brine, was the only widely available method of preserving meat until the 19th century...

 in what today is Argentina. The town was named in 1888 by Eduardo Wilde
Eduardo Wilde
Eduardo Wilde was an Argentine physician, politician, and writer, and among the most prominent intellectual figures of the modernizing Generation of '80 in Argentina.-Life and times:...

 in honor of his uncle Dr. José Antonio Wilde (1813–1887), a physician who led local efforts to improve public health and obtained permits for the construction of the local hospital and sewer system.
The 1885 opening of a Buenos Aires Great Southern Railway
Buenos Aires Great Southern Railway
The Buenos Aires Great Southern Railway was one of the Big Four broad gauge, , British-owned companies that built and operated railway networks in Argentina...

 station at the site led to the establishment of Villa Jurado, the city's first subdivision, in 1889.

From the beging following a moviment of English gardens the city was developed by local architects as the residencial borough of Avellaneda. Large grounds previously utilized by the local "gauchos" for the training of horses and farming land, eventually were converted into large parks and the region became a popular area for weekend cottages for the busy city people. On the east end of Wilde, there is a large coastal area with natural sandy beach washed by the River de la Plata, from where is posible to see on clear days the coast of Uruguay
Uruguay
Uruguay ,officially the Oriental Republic of Uruguay,sometimes the Eastern Republic of Uruguay; ) is a country in the southeastern part of South America. It is home to some 3.5 million people, of whom 1.8 million live in the capital Montevideo and its metropolitan area...

.

A particularly interesting time in the town's history was the vibrant period of the 30's to the 50's when large number of European immigrants settled in the area creating a multilingual society that gave birth to some well known bilingual schools and private colleges, such as:
  • Instituto San Pablo
  • Colegio San Ignacio
  • Colegio San Diego
  • Colegio Modelo Sara Eccleston - The British School Sara Eccleston
  • Colegio Modelo John F. Kennedy - The American School John F. Kennedy


The community developed rapidly and soon it was turned into a small city while keeping the country side aspect of a green and garden like residencial borough.

Sport

  • Soccer Clubs:

Wilde is home to the training ground of Club Atlético Independiente
Club Atlético Independiente
Club Atlético Independiente is an Argentine athletic, sports and social club, which has its headquarters and stadium in the city of Avellaneda, Buenos Aires Province. The club is best known for its football team, that plays in the Argentine Primera División....

, and is also home to the Club El Porvenir
Club El Porvenir
Club El Porvenir is an Argentine football club, located in the Gerli neighborhood, which is part of the district of Lanús Partido in the Gran Buenos Aires....

, a football club playing in the lower leagues of Argentine football.
  • Sport and Social Clubs:

Wilde is home to some of the oldest social clubs in the region the "Sporting Club" and the "Club Juventud" meaning the youth club, these were among the finest and most up and coming meeting grounds in the Province of Buenos Aires for the young society.

Historical Records

In 1619, don Melchor Maciel acquired the lands of Gaitán and created a larger manor with grounds for cattlery and developed a residence by the large shores of the river de la Plata. After his death, his widow Catalina de Melo
Melo
Melo is the capital city of the Cerro Largo Department of north-eastern Uruguay. It is located at the centre of the department, on the intersection of Route 7 with Route 8, south of Aceguá and the border with Brazil. Other primary roads to the city are Route 26 and Route 44. The stream Arroyo...

, passed the land by marriage to Home Pesoa de Sá, whom eventually created an even larger property of 24,000 hct all the way to the river Samborombón
Samborombón
Samborombón is a small rural community in Brandsen Partido in Buenos Aires Province, Argentina, located at Kilometer 90 of Route 2.- Are there two Samborombón? :...

. This large territorry eventually passed on to the hands of his son’s wife Maria de Arroyo, whom decided to divide the land in four large fractions to have an eassier control and administration funds.
One of these franctions was acquired by don Juan Estanislao Zamudio and his wife doña María del Carmen La Valle during XVIII. The section of the today house the Park Dominico was purchased by a German family and eventually reached the hands of Mercedes von Bismarck
Bismarck
- People :* Bismarck family, a German noble family descending from Herebord von Bismarck* Otto von Bismarck , German statesman of the 19th century* Herbert von Bismarck , Secretary of State, son of Otto von Bismarck...

 whom before her death donated the land to the church for the creation of a park for the youth that at a time was named “Geodesia” and today is known as “Parque Dominico” for the Dominican Monastery that holded the administration. A neighboring landowner, Federico Gattemeyer, did likewise and in 1908 donated a large funding trust to the Port Railway for the creation of a station in Villa Domínico that was opened in 1909. The remaining lands were acquired by various familias among them one of the Pereyra Iraola to develop the land since the North part of the Province of Buenos Aires was not as fertille as the Wildes.

The British and the Wilde Railway Station

Argentina's two biggest railways were built by the British, owned and operated Central Argentine Railway Ltd and the Buenos Ayres Great Southern Railway Co. Ltd, with headquarters in London with offices and settlements in Wilde and Quilmes.
They were started at the same time, but the Southern was made in sections, while the Central was planned as a great iron road to open almost four hundred miles of sparsely populated, rich land.
A decree dated in August 1863 authorized the construction of the Southern, based on a proposal by a group of people that included the already mentioned wealthy Irish merchant Thomas Armstrong
Thomas Armstrong
Sir Thomas Armstrong was an English organist, conductor, educationalist and adjudicator. He had a substantial influence on British music for well over half a century. From 1955 to 1968 he was principal of the Royal Academy of Music...

 and George Drabble, a pioneer in railways and in the frozen meat trade and one-time president of the Bank of London and River Plate who had arrived in Buenos Aires in 1848, Alfred Lumb, Henry Green
Henry Green
Henry Green was the nom de plume of Henry Vincent Yorke , an English author best remembered for the novel Loving, which was featured by Time in its list of the 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005.- Biography :Green was born near Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire, into an educated family...

, John Fair and Henry Harrat, merchants and landowners who were anxious to invest in a promising enterprise and to increase the value of their property by means of the new communications. The initial authorized capital was about £700,000. Lumb had the concession and the support of shareholders among whose names were Thomas Duguid, the Fair family, British Consul Frank Parish - later the Southern's chairman who, with Baring, bought into the Central - and David Robertson. They were all the elite of the British community and as such found no difficulty in selling shares to investors in London, Birmingham, Liverpool and Manchester. The company quoted on the London stock exchange.

The Standard of 4 August 1865 announced that `The Southern Railway will be open for passenger traffic on Monday, the trains will leave in the morning from Constitución railway station  to La Plata
La Plata
La Plata is the capital city of the Province of Buenos Aires, Argentina, and of La Plata partido. According to the , the city proper has a population of 574,369 and its metropolitan area has 694,253 inhabitants....

 with stops in Wilde and Quilmes and return at night - they will go to a station within three leagues of Chascomus
Chascomús
Chascomús, is the principal city in Chascomús Partido in eastern Buenos Aires Province in eastern Argentina, located south of the capital Buenos Aires. As of 2001, the city had a population of 30,670 people.-History:...

', which became the terminal in December of that year. Those were the first eighty miles. Another 500 were added in the next twenty years.

Famous Unexpected Visitors

In 1903–04 the maddy coast of Wilde received unexpected visitors from the sea, some of the crew members of the Scottish National Antarctic Expedition
Scottish National Antarctic Expedition
The Scottish National Antarctic Expedition , 1902–04, was organised and led by William Speirs Bruce, a natural scientist and former medical student from the University of Edinburgh. Although overshadowed in prestige terms by Robert Falcon Scott's concurrent Discovery Expedition, the SNAE completed...

 were hosted at the summer residence of Dr W. G. Davis
Davis
Davis may refer to:* Davis , a Welsh surname meaning 'son of David'* Davis Bertans , a Latvian professional basketball player* Davis Bloome, fictional character in Smallville...

, while their ship the Scotia ran aground in the Rio de la Plata
Río de la Plata
The Río de la Plata —sometimes rendered River Plate in British English and the Commonwealth, and occasionally rendered [La] Plata River in other English-speaking countries—is the river and estuary formed by the confluence of the Uruguay River and the Paraná River on the border between Argentina and...

estuary, and was stranded for several days before floating free and being assisted into the port of Buenos Aires by a tug, on 24 December.
During the following four weeks, while the ship was dry-docked, Bruce negotiated with the Argentine government over the future of the weather station. He was assisted by the British resident minister, the British Consul, and Dr W. G. Davis who was director of the Argentine Meteorological Office.

As of late November 2011, an American and Argentinian were planning a visit to the town based solely on it's bizarre and fascinating name and the legend which the town had cultivated in the minds of gringos all over greater Buenos Aires.

External links

Wilde on line website Soy de Wilde
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