Then the merchant class got VERY rich. They brought top French architects to Argentina from Europe for years at a time, to design & supervise construction of their buildings, including their new homes, & new country homes, Town Hall(s), municipal buildings, libraries, museums, social club houses, & eventually entire Parisien style apartment blocks. These buildings are still standing today. The civic buildings are still in use. Many of the private homes are embassies, museums, art galleries, function centres & luxury hotels today.
This is why BA is often referred to as the 'Paris of the South' & why so many tv commercials are shot here as a location, particularly for the French brands. It's this aesthetic richness that is startling to people who're expecting an impoverished Latin American country.
During the same period, the same affluent group of leaders planted an extraordinary amount of trees along each & every street. As Argentina has an abundance of water, these trees are now very tall, very strong & line the streets creating a shady canopy in summer, in every direction you look. Their roots make hell with the sidewalks these days but that's the price Portenos (citizens of BA = port people) are used to paying. Many public fountains were built & formal gardens were established too. Similarly, many of these grand buildings are suffering from maintenance neglect, as a result of the financial crisis in 2001 that rearranged priorities within the municipal budget overnight. It's enough to keep up the annual repainting to eradicate the ubiquitous graffiti! So sad.
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