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Chalecito Díaz in Buenos Aires: the house of a Spanish migrant to take a siesta on a roof terrace with a view of the Obelisk

2022-11-14T01:27:39.289Z


In 1926, Rafale Díaz built a two-story house with a tiled roof on the 12th floor of his furniture store.


A chalet on top of a building.

This unusual construction draws the attention of the inhabitants of Buenos Aires and the tourists who visit the city when they look up at the Obelisk.

For almost a century, the house has raised numerous questions;

now, by opening their doors to the public, they are beginning to have a response.

From being the place where the Spanish immigrant Rafael Díaz slept his siesta in the thirties to becoming the tip of the iceberg of a gastronomic-cultural commitment headed by his great-grandson, Diego Sethson.

The foundations of Chalecito Díaz began to be built in 1926, when the mega-work that would demolish the buildings between two streets to transform that space into the ambitious 9 de Julio avenue and erect the Obelisk in its heart had not yet begun.

Díaz, who was born in Seville and emigrated to Buenos Aires as a teenager with his mother, was 44 years old at the time and had become a prosperous furniture merchant.

He dreamed of a building that would be a huge showcase for his firm, Muebles Díaz, with a floor dedicated to each type of need: in the first there were girls' rooms, in the second those for boys and in the third the matrimonial ones.

Furniture intended for country houses and offices occupied another of the nine floors.

“He was a pioneer of

on-demand

sales .

He asked the client what color his walls were, how the family was made up and helped him choose what furniture he wanted in each room.

Afterwards he would take them in a wagon, ”says Sethson.

The chalet, top left, and the Obelisk seen from 9 de Julio avenue in Buenos Aires. Silvina Frydlewsky

Above the store he wanted to add a French Norman-style chalet inspired by those of the coastal city of Mar del Plata that he and his wife admired.

The idea was to be able to retire there to take a break from the working day given the impossibility of going and returning to the family home, located in Banfield, on the outskirts of Buenos Aires.

The elevator only has buttons to go up to the first nine floors.

To get there, to the tenth, you need a special key.

El Chalecito Díaz, declared a cultural heritage site in 2014, consists of two floors, a large terrace, a mezzanine and five rooms with a privileged 360-degree view of the city.

From the room where Díaz took his siesta, he saw the inauguration of the Obelisk in 1936 as part of the celebrations of the 400 years of the city and the subsequent creation of one of its great arteries.

From the other rooms it is possible to distinguish numerous emblematic buildings: the dome of the Argentine Congress, the Palacio Barolo and the mural of Eva Perón on the facade of the Ministry of Health, among others.

“This is a family home that we were not going to open to the public.

I decided to do it because we were going bankrupt, we were about to lose everything”, says Sethson from the impressive terrace.

The pandemic emptied the office buildings in downtown Buenos Aires, and the Díaz family building was no exception.

Since the furniture store closed in 1985, its location opposite one of the symbols of the city had worked in its favor to attract tenants—it is very well connected—but also against it, because the Obelisk is one of the epicenters of street protests from Buenos Aires.

"Some foreigners who wanted to make a tango space left for this reason," says Sethson, emphasizing that more than half of the floors are empty.

Diego Sethson poses next to the Obelisk from the terrace of the chalet that his great-grandfather had built, in Buenos Aires, on October 31, 2022. Silvina Frydlewsky

The family is willing to sell the building or, as an alternative, they seek to transform it into a cultural-gastronomic center in collaboration with a group of investors.

An example is the multi-purpose room that is already on the seventh floor, but the icing on the cake is the chalet.

Once a month reservations are opened to see the sunrise, the most demanded activity.

"It's exploding with people," says Sethson, surprised by the success of an initiative that requires setting the alarm clock at four in the morning.

Wine tastings,

pizza parties

and guided tours are also in great demand.

In addition, the location is rented to musicians and artists to make recordings.

While the fate of the building remains up in the air, Sethson enjoys recounting the family history and anecdotes accumulated over 96 years within its four walls.

Before Rafael Díaz bought the land on which he grew up, when he was a newly arrived 14-year-old immigrant, he went to work in a fabric business in the Once neighborhood.

"He had nowhere to sleep, he would lie on top of a counter, and when the place closed, at eight, they locked him and his mother up," says the great-grandson.

That situation caused Díaz to fight with his employer for fear that a fire would break out and they would not be able to escape.

Still, he continued in that trade for ten years before switching to furniture, from which he amassed a small fortune.

The Buenos Aires Obelisk reflected in one of the windows of the Chalecito Díaz. Silvina Frydlewsky

At the top of the building, the young entrepreneur installed a radio antenna to give life to LOK Radio Mueblería Díaz.

Half an hour of music interspersed with commercials, says Sethson.

Another of the stories he narrates has to do with Díaz's love of movies and music.

His great-grandfather lent the terrace for the film

Come to dance rock,

defying the prohibition that weighed on this musical genre during the dictatorship of Pedro Aramburu.

Sethson would like the terrace to host a gastronomic venue and hold cultural events on it.

The stories of the Chalecito Díaz are intermingled these days with those of the first visitors and with those of those who keep furniture bought there in the last century.

One woman told them that when she was little she thought it was Santa's house and another had adopted it as a doll's house.

Sethson has begun to record a film that will be nourished by all that century of memories.

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Source: elparis

All news articles on 2022-11-14

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