Zanjon

I finally made it to what some consider one of the best preservation efforts in the city. Zanjon is a house museum on Defensa (just south of Chile). This is no ordinary house museum, with recreated rooms and furniture behind ropes. It is really an archaeological restoration that reveals the layers of a house that dates back to 1830 (atop an even older house). It is wholly private and depends upon the wealth of one individual and proceeds from corporate and social events that take place there to support the museum. Those are the reasons for my reservations about an otherwise amazing historic site.

Jorge Eckstein bought the property virtually site unseen, most likely as a speculative venture. He hoped to turn the first floor, set within up and coming (or returning) San Telmo into a restaurant and art gallery. As he started the process of clearing away the rubble of the building's interior (roofs had collapsed in on a series of courtyards) he discovered the layers of history -- its use as a tenement for immigrants up to the 1960s when it was closed up, its life as a private home from the 1830s, built right at the edge of the original site plan, and the world of slaves and servants who lived there. Most fascinating is how Eckstein revealed the tunnels that the owner and his neighbors built to cover over one of the original streams that flowed through here to the Rio, then just a few blocks away.

All of this is done quite wonderfully. It is a huge museum, three courtyards deep, two levels down into the ground. Visitors - all visits are guide-led -- are taken down to the former riverbed to see the tunnels built to protect those above from the stench of what were essentially sewers. You can even hear the trickle of water of the stream that could never be completely channeled away. (My old teacher Bill Cronon has had much to say about the fraught efforts to redirect rivers away from their natural pathways).

So, there is so much to be impressed by here. Nowhere else in the city, can you sense life in the early 19th century as well as here, with a full accounting of slavery that permeated the city (even though slavery was officially outlawed in 1813) and later uses by immigrants. There are also efforts to distinguish material with new materials, and preserve and interpret the remaining cisterns and objects uncovered during the ongoing archaeological effort.

But there is something also a bit disturbing to me. Because the building is used regularly for weddings, parities, and corporate events, the place has been designed to look as elegant as possible. Slate floors and elegant lighting, pictures on the wall for decoration rather than education push the historical to the side. It reminds me of Ellis Island when it first opened -- the main hall, where millions, crammed to pass by the inspectors, was turned into a gloriously clean ballroom, with little of the sense of the chaos and tension that once existed there.

Indeed, our guide, Mathilde, mentioned a museum that would be opening nearby. Zanjon, then, is not strictly a museum. Much of the infrastructure, the alterations, the flow is organized around the needs and desired atmosphere of corporate clients. It is perhaps an understandable decision that the owner made -- to fore go public funds which come with their own strings -- in favor of totally private funding. But it has an effect on the power and meaning of the site.

As we reached the climax of the tour -- when we enter the tunnels that were the great find of the site -- Mathilda asked that I not take photographs: "Only people who visit get to see this part." Then she described how at events they will suddenly turn off the lights -- "and down here the dark is solid" -- surprising the guests. But then the accordion beings and spotlights shine on the tango dancers. The spectacle begins.