Mar del Plata, Necochea and Quequén. 1895.

Album with 20 photographs -measures, around 8 x 11.3 cm / 3.14 x 4.44 in-, mounted on vintage cardboard -measures: 16.5 x 22 cm / 6.49 x 8.66 in-, all titled on the back, with a handwritten legend in iron gall ink, and dated. (1)

Early records of the newborn Mar del Plata, founded in 1874 by Patricio Peralta Ramos y Necochea, founded by Dardo Rocha in 1881. The set has thirteen views of Mar del Plata, five of Necochea and its Quequén river, and two studio portraits, one of a gentleman, and another of ensemble, with three men and a boy, both shots in front of a painted curtain with a beach with waves, and with a “false stone” of letterhead. Portraits, probably of the owner of these photographs.

We are facing a magnificent visual repertoire of those incipient coastal cities in the province of Buenos Aires: vast beaches, fishing boats, breakers on stones; a view of the Zamboni Palace, the first villa built on the Colón Hill, which belonged to a Norwegian millionaire and of which currently only the garage or Fortress of the villa is preserved, a small stone castle; the Old Church, Capilla de Santa Cecilia, a building that predates the very foundation of Mar del Plata, erected by Peralta Ramos after the death of his wife, Cecilia Robles, in 1861; the Grotto of Egaña, now disappeared, at that time "an obligatory walk for families and lovers, located in the ravines between Torreón and Cabo Corrientes" (2), and carved in its stone "Mar del Plata, founded by Patricio Peralta Ramos 1874". While in Necochea, there is a Palm Sunday, and images of the Quequén River and a raft crossing over it.

Notes:

1. In the reproduced images, we have placed the titles and date of each one at the bottom of it. Actually, these legends are on the back of each one.

2. Mercedes Monteverde: Photographs of Mar del Plata (1874 - 1950). Spas and Lifeguards. Vol. II. Mar del Plata, 2015, pp. 25-26.

We are grateful for the study that the Mar del Plata historian Mercedes Monteverde carried out, which will be given to those interested and will accompany the new owner of this iconographic treasure.

S.O.IV-GMMM