Avenida Leandro N. Marking the eastern end of the city, the thoroughfare was landscaped with cottonwood trees alamos , in Spanish , and was thus inaugurated in as the Paseo de la Alameda. The paseo became a popular weekend promenade, and its contiguous shores an unofficial riverfront park popular with bathers until an edict banned the practice for reasons of "moral terpitude. The frontage remained flood-prone, and in , Governor Juan Manuel de Rosas had a contention wall six blocks long built along the paseo.
An English Argentine investor, Edward Taylor, opened a pier along the promenade in , and the flood-control walls were extended northwards to Recoleta , and south to San Telmo , in subsequent works completed in Immigration in Argentina afterwards made the Paseo a veritable bazaar, in which Italian trattorias , French bistrots , German beer halls , and Greek restaurants operated alongside brothels and seedy bars.
The increasingly commercial desirability of the street, however, prompted the city to mandate in that all buildings along it be designed with porticos , a regulation still in force and one which forced the paseo's more precarious establishments to close. A sudden economic and population boom led the new President of Argentina, Julio Roca , to commission the development in of an ambitious port to supplement the recently developed facilities at La Boca , in Buenos Aires' southside.
Approved by the Argentine Congress in and financed by the prominent London -based Barings Bank the chief underwriter of Argentine bonds and investment, at the time , the project required the reclaiming of over hectares acres of underwater land and was accompanied by the widening of the Paseo de Julio into a boulevard. Unveiled in , the Font of the Nereids sparked moralist outrage over its nude Venus , and the masterpiece was relocated to its present Puerto Madero site in The improved boulevard saw the replacement of clapboard structures for upscale office buildings, mostly influenced by French architecture , and all distinguished by their archways.
The avenue's eclectic architectural selection was added to by rationalist buildings such as the Comega and the story Alas , which remained the tallest in Argentina until Zoning changes encted in allowed the development of the Catalinas Norte business park at the avenue's northern end, bringing with it the International style to the avenue's cityscape.
