Pedro Benoit

Pedro Benoit (February 18, 1836 – April 4, 1897) was an Argentine architect, engineer, and urbanist best known for designing the layout of La Plata City.

Life and times Pedro Benoit was born in Buenos Aires in 1836 to María Josefa de las Mercedes Leyes and ', a French émigré who had left his homeland following the Bourbon Restoration. His father, a trained architect, engineer and topographer instilled his interests in his son, who enrolled in 1850 at the Topography and Geodesics School of the Department of Engineering of the Province of Buenos Aires.

Gaining his first professional experience designing pontoon bridges for the Argentine Army, Benoit was contracted as a surveyor for the city of Buenos Aires. In this capacity, in 1858 he planned the first road to Ensenada, a harbor town 35 miles (56 km) south of Buenos Aires. The young surveyor was inducted into a local Freemason lodge in 1858 and the following year, he was commissioned by prominent local landowner Juan Dillon to design the urban layout for what became Merlo (a suburb west of Buenos Aires).

Benoit designed Merlo following patterns similar to those used by Pierre L'Enfant to design Washington, DC. Benoit relocated to the city he helped build, designing for it the first school and the Church of Our Lady of Mercy in 1863, still the city's central Roman Catholic church; Benoit's professed Freemasonry caused the Bishop of Buenos Aires, Monsignor Mariano Escalada, to deny the new parish a priest, however.

Benoit continued his duties as Director of the Department of Topography, planning the rectification of the Riachuelo River flowing south of Buenos Aires, then prone to flooding. His diverse training allowed Benoit an appointment to Merlo's Committee on Public Health in 1867, when he designed the Santa Isabel Cemetery. Remaining at the Topography Department, he plotted a tramway line between Ensenada and Tolosa, two small cities southeast of Buenos Aires. A prominent Spanish Argentine landowner, Manuel Rodríguez Fragio, commissioned Benoit in 1872 to design the master plan for another new city, Ituzaingó (not far from Merlo), and towards 1880, Benoit returned to Buenos Aires to help design the new ramparts for what would later become Puerto Madero. These efforts earned him the honor of Lieutenant Colonel of the Argentine Corps of Engineers.

Governor Rocha commissioned Benoit to plan the new city, which became the renowned urbanist's most ambitious project. Named La Plata after its mention in José Hernández's epic Martín Fierro, the city was planned by Benoit in a regular pattern of diagonals and precisely-placed squares.

Benoit chose to echo the design of Buenos Aires in his plan for La Plata, particularly in his use of diagonals, small squares, and architectural styles. Some technical details, such as the cemetery location at the far end of a road that begins at the Río de la Plata, have been noted as containing deep symbolism for life beginning in the water and ending in the east.

His master plan for the city earned Benoit two gold medals at the 1889 Paris Universal Exposition, where it was honored as the "City of the Future." Benoit was elected to the La Plata City Council the following year, during which he designed his city's great seal, and as Mayor in 1893. Keeping a busy schedule, he also accepted a post as the Director of the Provincial Mortgage Bank and as the first Dean of the School of Engineering in the newly created University of La Plata, in 1897.

The strain proved too much for Benoit, however, who died suddenly that year, at age 61. He is buried in La Recoleta Cemetery.