Maldonado Stream

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El Arroyo Maldonado is a stream in Buenos Aires, Argentina, that runs below Juan B. Justo Ave., and goes through 10 of the 47 neighbourhoods of the city: Versalles, Liniers, Villa Luro, Vélez Sarsfield, Floresta, Villa Santa Rita, Villa Mitre, Caballito, Villa Crespo and Palermo.

The Maldonado Stream was one of the natural limits of the city, before the Belgrano and Flores neighbourhoods incorporated. Its name is because the legend of la Maldonado, a woman that came with Pedro de Mendoza in 1536, and was abandoned in the plain, on the margins of the stream.

The stream became a deposit of garbage. At the time of rains, it was a huge lake of dirty water, and it was dangerous because its overflows; that's why the adjacent land devaluated.

The authorities decided to tube the stream, as a final solution to all the problems that caused, in a growing city. In 1929 the excavations started. After this important work, that occupied hundreds of workers and imported machines, the second phase started: a real boasting of ingenieering, that consisted in rising columns to support a gigantic slab.

It was the more trascendent work ever made at that time in Buenos Aires, and was designed by Obras Sanitarias de la Nación, as a part of a broader drainage of the city.

After the tubing, a big street of soil was built over the stream; and in 1936 they built the actual Juan B. Justo Ave.