The home of tango.

• Author: Holston, Mark
• Position: !Ojo!

IN THE COUNTRY WHERE tango worship is a daily obsession, the childhood home of Carlos Gardel, the style's greatest vocal interpreter, has long been considered a shrine by the most fervent tango devotees. After decades of neglect, the two-story dwelling once owned by the tango icon's mother, Berta, has been restored and reborn as the Museo Casa Carlos Gardel. Thanks to an extensive partnership of public and private organizations and individuals, what was once a humble abode in a seldom-visited Buenos Aires neighborhood is now a fitting repository of essential Gardel historic artifacts and memorabilia.

The museum was inaugurated last March as part of the city's annual week-long tango festival. Located at Jean Jaures 735, a tree-shaded street in the barrio of Abasto, the structure is what portenos call a casa chorizo--sausage house. Typical of the kind of dwellings that were being constructed in the latter part of the nineteenth century within the city's rapidly expanding boundaries, the home is long and narrow, stretching sausage-like from its entrance on the street deep into the block. A central patio was a fixture of such structures, with rooms located around it. During the 1960s, when the site was used as a tango club, the owners tore down many of the interior walls. Architects and representatives of Museos de la Ciudad used old photographs, public documents, and oral testimony to re-create the original physical layout.

The restoration began when residents of Abasto, one of forty-eight barrios in Buenos Aires, voted in 2002 to approve it as a priority project for the neighborhood. Businessman Eduardo Eurnekian, owner of the property, donated it to the city, and the work, budgeted for 500,000 pesos (about USS 175,000), was completed in two months by Aeropuertos Argentina 2000 S.A..

The museum has collected definitive articles that chronicle important chapters of the singer's life, from his infancy to his artistic success at the national and international levels, his friendships, loves, and passions. Among artifacts reproduced for sale in the museum's small shop are cigar accoutrements.

Garders life, from birth to death, is a story that resonates strongly in...