THE MYSTERIOUS HOUSE IN FRONT OF THE OBELISCO

It is not easy to see it behind the posters and signs, but there it is: in an amazing strange place. The tourists, curiously, are the ones who first see it. They live with their eyes in the skies, looking up and discovering the city that many Porteños think they know. It’s a house, a mysterious house on the top of a building in front of the Obelisco, which reminds us that you never really get to know your city.

It’s a wooden house, a chalet, on the top of a 10 story building. The first thing you think when you see it is: Who built this crazy thing and why he did it? The answer has a name and a surname: Rafael Díaz. He was a humble working class man who built furniture in the Obelisco area in the end of the XIX Century. His employer used to tell him: “You’re going to Heaven, Rafael, you have a small chalet booked in Heaven”.


That particular phrase, that dream, inspired Díaz. As time went by, he could build his own successful furniture empire. Eventually, he had the money to make his dream come true: he built a 10 story building (on 1113 Sarmiento Street) and crowned it with the chalet of his dreams (which he copied from one he loved in the near city of Mar del Plata). The year was 1927 and the Obelisco still did not exist.

Ten years later, the Obelisco paired the height of the chalet, the 9 de Julio Avenue was opened and the large posters and signs came to hide –partially- the house of his dreams. The owner died in the end of the sixties and the building was rent for offices. Nobody lived today in the house which once belonged to Rafael Díaz, but it remains in the same spot, surprising the visitors as a symbol of our mysterious Buenos Aires.