Outstanding quality details: The house features three untouched decorated ceilings (Fig. 1, above), its original wooden and mosaic floors (Fig. 5), an imposing portico which divides two saloons (consisting of two columns and a frontispiece, (Fig. 2), its original iron columns in the first "patio" (Fig. 4) and its original doors and windows. One door deserves a special mention: the "cancel" door, which is a second front door with elaborately decorated glass displaying the initials of the person who was owner of the house from 1904 to the 1940s: Francisco Roccatagliata (Fig. 3). Outstanding, too, is the façade which retains all its original elements, wooden windows and exquisitely decorated front door.

     Awards: For the historical value of the building in itself and the quality of the restoration work carried out, the house was declared a "Testimonio Vivo de la Memoria Ciudadana" [a Living Testimony of the City’s Memory] in November 1992 by the Museo de la Ciudad [B.A. City Museum]. In August 2000, the Legislatura de la Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires [Legislative Power of the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires] included the building in its Código de Planeamiento Urbano [Urban Planning Code] granting it a structural level of protection which, among other things, exempted the property from the payment of all municipal taxes.

     Casas "chorizo" (“Sausage” houses): This is an architectural type widely used in our country during the second half of the nineteenth century and the first part of the twentieth century. These are urban houses, built for only one family. Their popularity is due to their versatility and adaptability which allow them to accept different scales, constructive systems and expressive languages. Their spatial organization is defined by a roofed volume consisting of a succession of rooms placed along one of the walls shared with, and separating from, the next-door neighbour. In this particular case, the house had two courtyards or "patios". The one located closer to the front door was destined to the use of the family. The second one was the service patio assigned to this kind of activity and to the servants’ quarters. At present, part of the latter has been turned into a garden.

     The neighbourhood: La Concepción/Constitución. The house is ten blocks from Constitución Station, an impressive building inaugurated in 1931, terminal of the Southern (later General Roca) Railway which connects Buenos Aires with Argentina’s south. Before the construction of the railway (1865), the area was occupied by a market where products from the southern regions were purchased before entering Buenos Aires. During the times in which the country was under the dominion of the Spanish Crown, this area was part of the "ejido" (an area of common land which, under Spanish law, had to surround every new city founded in American territory).
     With reference to the particular piece of land on which the house was built: it had been, during the eighteenth and first half of the nineteenth century, part of a much larger "quinta" (a country residence with plants and orchards that also provides fresh food for its owners, frequently very wealthy), belonging to the family of Bernardino Rivadavia. Elected to the office in 1826, Bernardino Rivadavia was Argentina´s first president.

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