Constructed between 1942 and 1945, it is the first urban renewal development of multifamily housing in Caracas by state institutions (Banco Obrero), erasing an informal and depressed area from the capital’s map. Its axial layout of square and triangular blocks configured a Y-shaped street system originating the future San Martín and Bolívar avenues and the northwest link with Avenida Sucre, toward Catia, at whose intersection Plaza O’Leary is located. This rectangular space is the neighborhood’s emblematic center and comes to life with the fountain adorned with sculptures in ivory colored stone by Francisco Narváez. The housing complex consists of a group of seven buildings, shaped differently on each block. It has 747 apartments and 207 business premises on the ground floor, lined by corridors with arches supported by belly columns. The buildings, which embrace inner spaces planted with trees, with projecting balconies, have four floors, except Bloque 1, which has seven floors and dominates the complex. Each building has a doorway inspired by vernacular colonial architecture, expressed in different styled moldings. Because of the characteristics of its modern architecture, the complex’s composition and implantation in the urban fabric, and the way it recreated social housing typology with new scenery of continuous walls of mixed uses with urban quality, it was declared a National Cultural Heritage.

Plaza O’Leary,
With vehicle access through the tunnel under the Centro Simón Bolívar towers, is one of the strongest modern spatial experiences in downtown Caracas. Its west side is marked by the shopping arcades of El Silencio residential complex, designed by Carlos Raúl Villanueva. The rectangular plaza with rounded corners has a central fountain by Francisco Narváez, adorned with nymphs and dolphins –the «Toninas» –, that shoot abundant water onto a reflecting pool and cheer the pedestrians and drivers with their sound, reinforcing one of the essential principles of modernity: movement and trajectory.