Calle de la Caoba

A short street named after a tree that never grew in Madrid. Mahogany belongs to the humid forests of Central America and the Caribbean, and from there it sailed to the workshops of the Old World. Spain used it as early as the sixteenth century, and its great moment came between 1720 and 1820, when it ruled fine furniture and English cabinetmakers sought it for its warm color and a stability that barely yields to humidity. The whole neighborhood breathes the names of plants. Las Acacias owes its own to the paseo de las Acacias, named for the trees that lined it, and calle de la Caoba joins that arboreal streak of Arganzuela. No record survives of the exact reason this wood was chosen for the street.