Villa Domínico is a city in the

Avellaneda Partido Avellaneda is a partido in Buenos Aires Province, Argentina. It has an area of and a population of 663,953 in 2001. Its administrative seat is the city of Avellaneda. The partido is located in the Greater Buenos Aires urban area, separated from ...

. Buenos Aires Province, Argentina. It belongs to the Greater Buenos Aires

urban agglomeration An urban area, built-up area or urban agglomeration is a human settlement with a high population density and infrastructure of built environment. Urban areas are created through urbanization and are categorized by urban morphology as cities ...

History

A 1580 expedition by Captain

Juan de Garay Juan de Garay (1528–1583) was a Spanish conquistador. Garay's birthplace is disputed. Some say it was in the city of Junta de Villalba de Losa in Castile, while others argue he was born in the area of Orduña (Basque Country). There's n ...

, the founder of present-day

Buenos Aires Buenos Aires ( or ; ), officially the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires ( es, link=no, Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires), is the capital and primate city of Argentina. The city is located on the western shore of the Río de la Plata, on South ...

, resulted in land grants for an

Adelantado ''Adelantado'' (, , ; meaning "advanced") was a title held by Spanish nobles in service of their respective kings during the Middle Ages. It was later used as a military title held by some Spanish ''conquistadores'' of the 15th, 16th and 17th cen ...

, Torres de Vera, and a

Regidor A regidor (plural: ''regidores'') is a member of a council of municipalities in Spain and Latin America. Portugal also used to have the same office of ''regedor''. Mexico In Mexico, an ayuntamiento (municipal council) is composed of a municipal ...

, Luis Gaitán. Melchor Maciel purchased the Gaitán heirs' land in 1619, and Maciel's widow, who remarried after his 1633 death, expanded her holdings to 24,000 hectares (60,000 acres). Following the death of their son, Luis Pesoa de Figueroa, in 1725, his widow divided the estate into four equal parcels. Juan Estanislao Zamudio purchased three of the lots, and the fourth was donated by the widow to the

Roman Catholic Roman or Romans most often refers to: *Rome, the capital city of Italy * Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD * Roman people, the people of ancient Rome *'' Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a let ...

Dominican Order The Order of Preachers ( la, Ordo Praedicatorum) abbreviated OP, also known as the Dominicans, is a Catholic mendicant order of Pontifical Right for men founded in Toulouse, France, by the Spanish priest, saint and mystic Dominic of ...

, who established the Convent of Santo Domingo. The '' Camino Real'' was extended south from Sarandí by order of the Real Consulado de Buenos Aires, and the

pontoon bridge A pontoon bridge (or ponton bridge), also known as a floating bridge, uses floats or shallow-draft boats to support a continuous deck for pedestrian and vehicle travel. The buoyancy of the supports limits the maximum load that they can carry. ...

built to extend the road gave this area its first informal name: ''Paraje del Puente Chico'' (Little Bridge Outpost). Andrés Pazos bought much of the land in 1820, and his rural home was counted in the 1838 census of Buenos Aires Province commissioned by Governor Juan Manuel de Rosas. Patricio Brown installed the first industrial establishment, a salted meat maker, in 1850. Estacion dominico

Jorge Domínico purchased the land in 1856. He sold a swath of land therein to the

Buenos Aires and Ensenada Port Railway The Buenos Aires & Ensenada Port Railway (BA&EP) (in Spanish: Ferrocarril Buenos Aires y Puerto de la Ensenada) was a British-owned company that built and operated a broad gauge railway network in Argentina towards the end of the nineteenth cen ...

, which was completed in 1872. The first lots were sold to homesteaders on August 11, 1894. A neighboring landowner, Federico Gattemeyer, did likewise in 1908, and the Port Railway opened a station in Villa Domínico in 1909. Driven by a wave of

immigration in Argentina Immigration to Argentina began in several millennia BCE with the arrival of different populations from Asia to the Americas through Beringia, according to the most accepted theories, and were slowly populating the Americas. Upon arrival of ...

, the settlement grew quickly, and by 1910, was home to around 1,100 inhabitants. The Villa Domínico Community Development and Mutual Aid Society was established on August 28, 1910, and by their initiative, the first fire house was opened in 1912. The Church of San José was consecrated on April 23, 1918. The cities representative in the Provincial Legislature, Fabían Onzari, succeeded in having a comprehensive

flood control Flood control methods are used to reduce or prevent the detrimental effects of flood waters."Flood Control", MSN Encarta, 2008 (see below: Further reading). Flood relief methods are used to reduce the effects of flood waters or high water level ...

plan enacted for the area in 1923, and the network of

canal Canals or artificial waterways are waterways or engineered channels built for drainage management (e.g. flood control and irrigation) or for conveyancing water transport vehicles (e.g. water taxi). They carry free, calm surface flo ...

s and ancillary works, known as the Onzari Plan, was completed in 1929. The city became a

bedroom community A commuter town is a populated area that is primarily residential rather than commercial or industrial. Routine travel from home to work and back is called commuting, which is where the term comes from. A commuter town may be called by many o ...

with a services-oriented economy in subsequent decades.

External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Villa Dominico Populated places in Buenos Aires Province Populated places established in 1894 Avellaneda Partido