History
Las Lomas was founded in the early 1920s by American, British and local investors, as an expansion of Mexico City. It was created on the hills in the west side of the valley. It was professionally planned by American landscape architects and engineers in the Olmstead "Garden City fashion", with large lots and large gardened yards, wide winding streets and gardened boulevards, scattered small shopping areas within walking distances from homes; the early settlers attracted to the area were young professionals and some of the nouveau riche revolutionaries, bureaucrats and the new business class of Mexico City, small cottages were built on the side streets and mostly large houses on Paseo de la Reforma and Paseo de Las Palmas, the two main avenues.
Many of the early houses were built in the "Californian Colonial" style with imitation stone carvings around windows and doors and pitched roofs, later on began they began to build modern houses designed by the big name architects. Many of the houses built during that time, including the modest house of the world's richest man (Carlos Slim Helú), are still standing in the area and constitute the largest mansions in the entire Lomas Area.
First came Lomas de Chapultepec, later on in the early 50's, riding on Lomas' success and the glitter on its name, other developers opened subdivisions further out into the adjacent Estado de Mexico with names including the magic word "Lomas", such as Lomas de Tecamachalco, Lomas de la Herradura, Lomas Altas and Bosques de Las Lomas (where President Lopez Portillo built his gigantic estate - La Colina del Perro).
The area grew in size, being mostly inhabited by the upper class and the European immigrants that arrived in Mexico in the early 20th century.
Today, Lomas is defending itself from the onslaught of the automobiles residing in its badly designed neighbouring developments, the lack of adequate public transportation and street infrastructure thus creating a destroying force, putting the Lomas street infrastructure under pressure to an otherwise calm, beautiful and well designed urban space that Lomas is.
Read more about this topic: Lomas De Chapultepec
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“It may be well to remember that the highest level of moral aspiration recorded in history was reached by a few ancient Jews—Micah, Isaiah, and the rest—who took no count whatever of what might not happen to them after death. It is not obvious to me why the same point should not by and by be reached by the Gentiles.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)
“History ... is, indeed, little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind.
But what experience and history teach is this—that peoples and governments have never learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
“I believe that history might be, and ought to be, taught in a new fashion so as to make the meaning of it as a process of evolution intelligible to the young.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)