Neighborhood Peñarol: modern, industrial, singular. Hereditalization and reutilization

Abstract

Between 1890 and 1907, Central Uruguay Railway (CUR) company founded a railway town in Peñarol, a rural place at that time, 10 kilometers up north of Montevideo bay. Over 17 hectares, 33.000 square meters of workshops, train stations, houses, grocery stores, meeting places and a theater, were built. In 1910 the workshops already employed 2.000 workers. Peñarol lived like an industrial town until it gradually became another Montevideo’s neighborhood. In this article those implementations and their uses are described, since the beginning until its current deindustrialization stage. It describes the heritage activation process started seven years ago by the Municipality of Montevideo in accordance with the Railway National Administration. Complementary it exposes the reuse alternatives for the idle capacities that the railway shrinkage brought upon the area. Hereditalization and reutilization are the keys to a development project, to a new calling for the installments and properties of the national railway company that, though shrunken, keeps on operating. Historical buildings, important parts of the industrial machinery and, in consequence, the industrial tradition, remain.