El Ateneo

El Ateneo Grand Splendid is one of the best known bookshops in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Situated at 1860 Santa Fe Avenue in Barrio Norte, the building was designed by the architects Peró and Torres Armengol for the empresario Max Glucksman (1875-1946), and opened as a theatre named Teatro Gran Splendid in May 1919. The ecleticist building features ceiling frescoes painted by the Italian artist Nazareno Orlandi, and caryatids sculpted by Troiano Troiani (whose work also graces the cornice along the Buenos Aires City Legislature.

The theatre had a seating capacity of 1,050, and staged a variety of performances, including appearances by the tango artists Carlos Gardel, Francisco Canaro, Roberto Firpo and Ignacio Corsini. Glücksman started his own radio station in 1924 (Radio Splendid), which broadcast from the building where his recording company, Nacional Odeón, made some of the early recordings of the great tango singers of the day. In the late twenties the theatre was converted into a cinema, and in 1929 showed the first sound films presented in Argentina.