History of public sanitation in Montevideo: the first master pipes (1854-1913).
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.35954/SM2025.44.1.7.e701Keywords:
History, 19th Century, History, 20th Century, Health Planning, Public Health, Housing Sanitation, Urban Sanitation, Yellow Fever Virus.Abstract
In the year 2022, while driving along Juan Carlos Gómez Street (before the installation of the security cameras) I noticed that part of the pavement had sunk, exposing a section of the tunnel of the city's first sewage system.
The old construction was part of the primitive sewage network that Montevideo and South America had in the 19th century, the “Arteaga Network”. Knowing the statement of a departmental councilman in the XXI century about “problems in the collector” that pours its contents into the waters of the Rio de la Plata and causes bacterial contamination, prompted me to write these pages because of the relationship of this network with the history of public hygiene in the city.
The system of master pipes was a work promoted and developed by a private company whose concession, imperfectly controlled by the State, did not work well. The public-private partnership goes back a long way. The urban services of Montevideo were all initiated by private impulse, while the State -rather than controlling- was busy making and responding to the wars that were ruining the country.
The first factory producing gaseous fuel conducted through pipes for illumination and energy was built in 1853 and definitively established in 1856; in 1854 the installation of master pipes began; in 1871 came the domestic drinking water; in 1878 the urban telephone service began; from 1887 there was electric energy; between 1868 and 1880 the urban transport network was built by means of the tramway on rails, which was first driven by blood and then by electricity from 1906 onwards. All of this was privately driven.
Received for review: October 2024.
Accepted for publication: December 2024.
Correspondence: 21 de setiembre 2713. App. 401. C.P. 11300. Montevideo, Uruguay.
Tel.: (+598) 27101418.
Contact e-mail: asoiza@adinet.com.uy
This article was approved by the Editorial Committee.
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