CHAPTER VII
A SPLENDID CITY OF SHAM
“Of course we all work in sham,” remarked a prominent Argentine architect to me, one clear, still night, as we leant together over the rail of a river steamer, discussing the pros and cons of Buenos Ayres—a subject as infinitely interesting to River Platers as the weather to the Englishman.
The “of course” was a kindly concession to some criticism of mine and showed an open and liberal mind. The architect was no self-deluding porteño to whom Buenos Ayres was everything good, true and beautiful. He was prepared to admit the warts.
He were, indeed, the blindest and most incompetent of observers who failed to notice at the end of his first hour in Buenos Ayres that it is a city of “sham.”
Its buildings are of no distinctive value architecturally—nay, not even the most notable. Without exception they follow European models in exterior treatment, no matter how widely they may differ from them interiorly. That many of the public buildings are imposing, and at first glance look like “the real thing,” no one will deny. Besides, he who were foolish enough to deny this could be confronted with the evidence of the official photographs which have conveyed to an envious Europe the idea that Buenos Ayres eclipses her worn-out old cities in its architectural glories. A photograph makes lath and plaster to look like granite and porphyry. Through the camera the graceful buildings of the St. Louis “World’s Fair” appeared as permanent as the pyramids, though a few score labourers with picks and shovels wiped them out in less time than it took to put them up.
Buenos Ayres is truly a city of sham. Nor is this to its shame. For it costs more to erect its steel-frame and cement structures than it does in Washington or London to rear solid piles of masonry. The country is destitute of workable stone, and the bricks made in the Argentine are so unsightly and spongy that they can only serve as a base for plaster. Wood also is scarce and the gorgeous doors, without which no fine building in Buenos Ayres would be considered complete, have to be imported at great cost from Europe. Many of these are beautiful and in this one respect the city may be said to outvie Paris, whence comes this taste for the grandeur in gates.
It may be a mere old-world prejudice on my part, but I have never been able to look with real interest on a building that has not been made of brick or stone. In Europe, in the United States, also, we are accustomed to historic buildings that have been reared by competent workmen with the idea that they were to last forever, which, as Ruskin reminds us, is the only true way to build. To come to a new land and find that the most pretentious efforts of the builder’s craft are chiefly stucco copies of European stone-work, leaves the beholder cold.
The Congreso has been trying for some years to become the pride of the town. It is the great marble-veneer palace where the legislators sit—in a literal sense, for they deliver their speeches seated—and it is effectively situated at the western end of the spacious Avenida de Mayo. It has been many years in course of construction and I am afraid to say how many millions of money have been spent upon it. At least, it has cost more than three times the amount originally voted for it, and there are few senators or deputies who have not had some pickings out of the “job.” No man knows when it will be finished, for it is said that as much material as would have built two such palaces has gone in at the front door of the works and been mysteriously absorbed. The explanation is that many a fine residence for a legislator with a “pull” has been built of the said material, after it had gone out a backdoor! Meanwhile the gorgeous Palacio del Congreso presents a noble marble front to the great Plaza Congreso and stares eastward along the Avenida without a blush for its ulterior nakedness. It is like the noble savage, “whose untutored mind clothes him in front and leaves him bare behind”; for when you have turned the corners from the plaza you discover that only the front part has been covered with marble slabs; behind there is naught but dirty naked bricks. So it has been for three or four years and so it is like to remain for some years to come; but meanwhile a photograph of the front does good service for sending abroad as an evidence of the architectural grandeur of the capital city.
But all this notwithstanding, the Congreso, as seen from almost any point of the Avenida, is an imposing building. Dignity and elegance are combined in its graceful proportions, and its elongated dome soars above the surrounding buildings with a fine sense of confidence. The Corinthian column is used very effectively in the façade and there are many—rather too many—statuary groups, in which winged figures and ramping horses are prominent. Grand stairways sweep up to the central door and inclined planes make possible the near approach of carriages. But immediately one steps inside there is disappointment. The central hall is of mean proportions, and in a few minutes all is confusion, as there is no real dignity of treatment, and certain inner courtyards are actually built with painted iron pillars hopelessly out of harmony with the prevailing style of the building. The Chamber of Deputies, in the form of an ellipse, is businesslike and handsome, but no more imposing than some of the council chambers of the great provincial cities at home. The Senate is a smaller and more elegant chamber, richly furnished with ample seats of ease and commodious desks for each of its distinguished members. There is another luxurious room, dedicated to special ceremonies, and the deputies’ lounge is immense and well-appointed, much after the style of some of the big New York clubs. It is, indeed, at once a club and an exchange, for here many of the “deals” by which some men make money in the Argentine, and others lose it, are consummated.
On the first floor are ranged all the different ministerial offices and committee rooms, and I think there were only two of these to which I did not gain admission. But there was little of interest to note in them. The fact that the rooms devoted to the affairs of the Army and Navy were about one-tenth the size of those required for the department of Public Works was eloquent and reassuring. But although I explored the whole building, high and low, I find I have retained only a very blurred impression of the interior with its bewildering passages, through which liveried servants bearing trays of tea dishes were constantly passing, as the Argentine deputy is a firm believer in getting all he can out of his country in addition to his annual salary of 12,000 pesos ($5,040), feeding at public expense, not only himself, but as many relatives and friends as have the good sense to find important business to transact in the lobbies of Congress at meal times.