Villa Urquiza

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**Villa Urquiza**
Area	5.6 km²
Population	89,360 (2001)
Density	15,957/km²
Comuna	C12


Important sites

Villa Urquiza is a barrio or neighborhood of Buenos Aires city, capital of Argentina. It is located between the barrios of Villa Pueyrredón, Belgrano, Villa Ortúzar, Coghlan , Saavedra and Agronomía. Its limits are the streets and avenues Constituyentes, Crisólogo Larralde, Galván, Núñez, Tronador, Roosevelt, Rómulo S. Naón and La Pampa.

It is a residential neighborhood of both old houses and apartment buildings, quiet streets and a few fast-traffic, crowded avenues. It has several parks that make it very pleasant. During the summer, it is not uncommon to see neighbors talking to each other, comfortably sitting on their chairs on the sidewalk.

It is also home of several institutions of importance to the Buenos Aires culture, such as the tango and milonga ballrooms Sunderland and Club Sin Rumbo, and the winner of the last three futsal metropolitan tournaments, Club Pinocho.

[edit] History

The founder of Villa Urquiza was Francisco Seeber who was a soldier in the War of the Triple Alliance against Paraguay, mayor of Buenos Aires between 1889 and 1890, merchant and president of Ferrocarril Oeste (Western Railroads company). In its beginnings, the barrio was composed by three small neighborhoods called Villa Catalinas, Villa Mazzini and Villa Modelo. The neighborhoods were situated on top of highlands, almost 40 meters above sea level. At the time, Francisco Seeber owned a company downtown called "Muelle de las Catalinas" (Catalinas' Wharfs), located at very low ground. So he bought the lands so much of them could be used to refill his company downtown. The workers that had worked on the project were mostly from the province of Entre Rios. And subsequently, they asked for the neighborhood to be named after their provincial hero, Justo José de Urquiza.