History and Description
Rocha decided to erect a new city to host the provincial government institutions and the planned university. Urban planner Pedro Benoit designed a city layout based on a rationalist conception of urban centers. The city has the shape of a square with a central park and two main diagonal avenues, north-south and east-west. (In addition, there are numerous other shorter diagonals.) This design is copied in a self-similar manner in small blocks of six by six blocks in length. Every six blocks, one finds a small park or square. Other than the diagonals, all streets are on a rectangular grid, and are numbered consecutively. Thus, La Plata is nicknamed "la ciudad de las diagonales" ("city of diagonals"). It is also called "la ciudad de los tilos" ("city of tilia (linden trees)") because of the large number of linden trees lining many streets and squares.
The city design and its buildings are said to possess a strong Freemason symbolism. This is said to be a consequence of both Rocha and Benoit being Freemasons.
The designs for the government buildings were chosen in an international architectural competition. Thus, the Governor Palace was designed by Italians, City Hall by Germans, etc. Electric street lighting was installed in 1884, and was the first of its kind in Latin America.
The cathedral of La Plata, in neo-Gothic style, is the largest church in Argentina.
The Curutchet House is one of the two buildings by Le Corbusier in the Americas. The Teatro Argentino de La Plata is the second most-important opera house in Argentina after the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires.
The University of La Plata was founded in 1897 and nationalized in 1905. It is well known for its observatory and natural history museum. Ernesto Sabato graduated in physics at this university; he went on to teach at the Sorbonne and the MIT before becoming a famed novelist. Doctor René Favaloro was another famous alumnus. During its early years, it attracted a number of renowned intellectuals from the Spanish-speaking world, such as Dominican Pedro Henríquez Ureña.
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