House of Culture of Buenos Aires, Cultural center in downtown Buenos Aires, Argentina

The House of Culture of Buenos Aires occupies a Beaux-Arts building on Avenida de Mayo, completed in 1898 for the newspaper La Prensa. Its pale grey stone facade has a dark slate mansard roof with a central domed cupola, a round clock face below the dome, and balustraded balconies between rows of tall rectangular windows. A gilt bronze Pallas Athena, 5.50 m tall and 4,100 kg, crowns the tower.

Engineers Carlos Agote and Alberto Gainza constructed this building in 1898 as the headquarters for La Prensa newspaper. The newspaper operated from this location until 1952, after which the building transitioned to its current role as a cultural institution.

The first floor centres on the Golden Salon, where José Camilo Paz opened the Instituto Popular de Conferencias in 1915; Jorge Luis Borges gave weekly literary readings and lectures there. Its walls carry frescoes by the Italian painters Reinaldo Giudici and Nazareno Orlandi. A passageway to the adjacent city hall was turned into the Ana Díaz Salon, used for art exhibits.

The building stands at Avenida de Mayo 575, between the Perú (Line A) and Catedral (Line D) subway stations. The main entrance opens onto the avenue, and the Ana Díaz Salon, a passageway converted into an exhibition room, links the building to the adjacent Buenos Aires City Hall. The upper floors are reached by the original elevators installed by the American firm Spargne.

The original building was equipped with a network of pneumatic tubes that allowed messages to travel quickly between different floors and rooms. A large siren was integrated into the structure to announce breaking news, enabling staff to alert readers immediately when important stories broke.