Calle del Porvenir
The street takes its name from the El Porvenir del Artesano housing cooperative, which in 1879 bought the surrounding land to build workers' homes beside the Camino de la Fuente del Berro. The City Council made the name official in 1887, confirming a usage already in place since the street opened.
The El Porvenir del Artesano cooperative, founded in 1873 and organized into sections of some fifty members, bought land so that each member, paying a weekly fee, could own a home. The first was finished in 1881 and the group reached about fifty houses. In 1887 the council made official a name already used in the neighborhood.
At number 13 stood the J. G. Girod watch factory, opened in 1860, which by 1910 employed some two hundred workers. A fire destroyed it in 1912. No recognizable building survives from that workers' quarter, and where the watchmaker’s stood there now rises a block of flats.
One of the best-known clocks produced by the Girod factory is the one on the tower of La Casa Encendida —the second branch of the Caja de Ahorros y Monte de Piedad de Madrid, inaugurated in 1913—. The tower mechanism was replaced by a modern one, but the restored Girod machinery is preserved in a display case on one of the landings of the staircase leading to the building’s rooftop.
Sources (5)
- El Camino de la Fuente del Berro, la fábrica de relojes y el barrio del Porvenir del Artesano — Arte en Madrid (Mercedes Gómez, 2018)
- Callejero Open Alfa — Calle del Porvenir, Fuente del Berro, Salamanca, Madrid
- Colonias históricas madrileñas. Fuente del Berro (Colonia Iturbe 1) — Arte en Madrid (2020)
- Callejero oficial del Ayuntamiento de Madrid — Portal de Datos Abiertos
- Building and history — La Casa Encendida