Tapiales is a town in

Argentina Argentina, officially the Argentine Republic, is a country in the southern half of South America. It covers an area of , making it the List of South American countries by area, second-largest country in South America after Brazil, the fourt ...

. It is located in La Matanza Partido and forms part of

Greater Buenos Aires Greater Buenos Aires (, GBA), also known as the Buenos Aires Metropolitan Area (, AMBA), refers to the urban agglomeration comprising the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires Buenos Aires, controlled by the government of the Autonomous City of B ...

. Tapiales had a population of 15,158 at the 2001 census. Tapiales was established in 1902 by Agustín Elía along the recently inaugurated Buenos Aires Western Railway (). Elía, who had purchased the land from the estate of the former Vice President, Francisco Bernabé Madero, sold the property in 1906 to ''La Franco Argentina'', a prominent Buenos Aires real estate company. ''Chacra de Los Tapiales'' ("adobe wall ranch"), built by the Altolaguirre family in the early 19th century, gave the settlement its name and remains as a town landmark. La Franco Argentina, in turn, sold the land in lots to investors and prospective homeowners, and in 1908, the railway, in which La Franco Argentina owned a stake, inaugurated a station at the site, as well as a

rail yard A rail yard, railway yard, railroad yard (US) or simply yard, is a series of Track (rail transport), tracks in a rail network for storing, sorting, or loading and unloading rail vehicles and locomotives. Yards have many tracks in parallel for k ...

. The town was divided geographically by the opening of the Riccheri Freeway in 1952, built to connect

Buenos Aires Buenos Aires, controlled by the government of the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires, is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Argentina. It is located on the southwest of the Río de la Plata. Buenos Aires is classified as an Alpha− glob ...

to the recently inaugurated Ministro Pistarini International Airport 8 mi (13 km) to the southwest. Tapiales grew significantly in the subsequent decade with the construction from 1968 to 1971 of a 900-unit

cooperative housing A housing cooperative, or housing co-op, is a legal entity which owns real estate consisting of one or more residential buildings. The entity is usually a cooperative or a corporation and constitutes a form of housing tenure. Typically hou ...

complex by '' El Hogar Obrero'', a leading firm in the Argentine cooperative movement. It was later chosen as the site for the Buenos Aires Central Market; the nation's largest wholesale market, it was inaugurated in Tapiales in 1984 to replace the

Abasto de Buenos Aires The Abasto Shopping is one of the biggest shopping mall centers in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The building was the central wholesale fruit and vegetable market in the city ("Mercado de Abasto") from 1893 to 1984. Since 1999, it has served as a shop ...

and is the town's largest employer.

References

External links

Tapiales Page and online forum
La Matanza Partido Populated places in Buenos Aires Province Populated places established in 1902 {{BuenosAiresAR-geo-stub