A cornerstone from Tucuman. That’s where our story of the Monumento a Alberdi Statue begins. This wasn’t just any stone. It was a 60 x 90 cm piece donated by the Araoz family. They extracted it from their quarry in La Fronterita. President Roberto Ortiz himself attended the laying of this cornerstone in Plaza Constitucion in 1938. The Monumento a Alberdi Statue project however took decades to fully realize.
The Monumento a Alberdi Statue was finally built. An international competition was held in 1960. Eighteen projects were submitted. The winning design Quo Vadis? meaning Where are you going? was by architect Carlos Maria Corvo and sculptor Mario Arrigutti.
Construction began in April 1962. The completed Monumento a Alberdi Statue covered 250 square meters. It was 23 meters long and 12 meters wide at the back. The front was narrower at 8 meters.
The sides featured high reliefs. One symbolized Peace and Victory. The other represented Thought and Knowledge. The Monumento a Alberdi Statue was more than just a statue. It included an auditorium and a library. The auditorium hosted lectures and film screenings.
The Monumento a Alberdi Statue’s exterior was a masterpiece. It used Mar del Plata stone. The base included Punilla marble from Cordoba. The marble was in shades of grey white lemon and sea green. All were polished to a high shine.
A 5-meter-tall bronze statue of Alberdi crowned the base. The architect envisioned a modern design. He wanted to capture Alberdi’s vigor at age forty when he wrote Las Bases. Corvo broke from traditional designs. He used straight lines and a grand ascending ramp. This ramp symbolized the ascension to constitutional legality. Alberdi was its greatest exponent. A circular planter added a touch of color.
The Monumento a Alberdi Statue was inaugurated on August 29 1964. President Arturo Illia attended. So did Uruguayan Foreign Minister Alejandro Zorrilla de San Martin.
Sadly the Monumento a Alberdi Statue no longer stands in its original form. It was demolished in 2017. A passenger transit center replaced it. Only the statue of Alberdi remains. It sits alone on a concrete block a silent testament to a grand monument that once stood tall.