Sheraton Buenos Aires Hotel & Convention Center

The Sheraton Buenos Aires Hotel & Convention Center is a five-star hotel located in the District of Retiro, Buenos Aires, Argentina.

The Sheraton Buenos Aires Hotel, 2009.

History
The Buenos Aires-Sheraton Hotel in 1976, as originally constructed, before the addition of the Park Tower wing.

A municipal ordinance enacted in 1967 commissioned the Municipal Department of Architecture and Urbanism (MCBA) to create the Catalinas Norte office park, touching off an important urban redevelopment effort in what had been a derelict annex of the Port of Buenos Aires. The northernmost parcel in the district, a 26,700 m² (287,000 ft²) lot, was sold by MCBA to local developer Kokourek S.A. on October 22, 1968, and plans were approved for the development of the Hostal Santa María de los Buenos Aires, which would become the first Sheraton Hotel in Argentina.[1]

Ground was broken on the project by Mayor Manuel Iricíbar on June 26, 1969, and the hotel was inaugurated as the Buenos Aires-Sheraton Hotel on August 24, 1972.[2] The building, one of the first Argentine hotels built in the International style, was designed by SEPRA architects Santiago Sánchez Elía, Federico Peralta Ramos, and Alfredo Agostini; SEPRA would subsequently design numerous other high-rises in the district, and became one of the leading architectural firms in Argentina.[1]

The original project featured an indoor shopping center, promenade, gardens, and an auditorium with capacity for 230 people. A convention center, restaurants, and bars were placed along the first floor promenade, and the hotel also featured terraces, two tennis courts, an outdoor swimming pool, banquet hall, and other amenities, including an extensive underground parking lot and a rooftop restaurant with terraces and a view of the Río de la Plata. The hotel originally housed 24 stories, and 739 rooms, with 33 suites located at either end of the building.[3]

Soon after the hotel opened, on October 16, 1972, it was the site of a terrorist attack.[4] A powerful bomb ripped through room 2204, killing Canadian tourist Lois Crozier and injuring her husband and an American woman. Another bomb was discovered on the hotel's second floor and defused by police. The leftist Montoneros and the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias later claimed responsibility for the attack.[5]

The Sheraton Buenos Aires Hotel and the Torre Monumental.

The building was expanded with the 1996 addition of another hotel, the Park Tower, a member of The Luxury Collection, increasing its size to 181 luxury rooms and suites at 23-stories, 91 m (299 ft). Also in this expansion, the Sheraton Buenos Aires Hotel & Convention Center doubled its convention capacity to 2,000 with the opening of the new Convention Center in March 1996, and a Neptune Pool & Fitness Center was completed in December. The combined facilities became the single largest hotel complex in Latin America,[6]

Among the first notable guests following these additions were international Korean businessman Sun Myung Moon and former U.S. President George H.W. Bush, who were on hand in November, 1996, to inaugurate Tiempos del Mundo (a News World Communications newsdaily published until 2007).[7]

Notable guests

References
  1. Contreras, Leonel. Rascacielos Porteños (1580 — 2005). Comisión para la Preservación del Patrimonio Histórico Cultural de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires. (in Spanish)
  2. Hotel Buenos Aires Sheraton. Summa (35): p. 41. SEPRA SCA (March 1971).
  3. Geographia: Sheraton Buenos Aires.
  4. https://www.nytimes.com/1972/10/17/archives/bomb-in-argentina-kills-a-us-woman.html
  5. "The Phoenix, October 18, 1972". Retrieved 12 November 2011.
  6. High Beam: Park Tower in Buenos Aires to join the Luxury Collection.
  7. La Nación (23 Nov 1996) (in Spanish)

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