Palermo’s hidden century-old mansion, commissioned by Sarmiento and used by Carlos Thays, seeks a return to its golden age

A red-brick mansion hidden a few steps from Buenos Aires’ busy Avenida Santa Fe is being lined up for a return to its former splendor. Its small towers rise among palms, magnolias and century-old tipa trees, giving the building the outline of an English castle.

The house stands within a nearly 78,000-square-meter site declared a National Historic Monument. Built in 1881, it was designed by Jordan Wysocki, a Polish-born military engineer invited by Domingo Faustino Sarmiento to help develop the city’s urban green spaces. Its red-brick façade and four corner towers make it one of the distinctive examples of brick architecture from the period.

The building was designed with large rooms on the ground floor and upper-level rooms connected by broad arches. That arrangement allowed it to serve different administrative and residential functions. From 1882 to 1894, it housed the National Department of Agriculture. It later became home to the National Historical Museum and, toward the end of the 19th century, the Directorate of Public Walks.

That last role tied the mansion closely to Carlos Thays, the French landscape architect and urban planner who worked there on the administration of Buenos Aires’ green spaces. Thays helped transform the city’s parks and promenades, leaving a lasting mark on its urban identity.

A long-standing version of the story says Thays lived in the mansion with his family, but no official records confirm it. His close connection to the building and its administration is documented. The mansion was already part of Buenos Aires history when the Botanical Garden opened to the public on Sept. 7, 1898, and it remained standing as Palermo changed from a peripheral area into one of the city’s most dynamic neighborhoods.