Calle Iturbe
The street is named after Gregorio Iturbe Aldalur, a Navarrese developer who from 1912 financed the garden colonies beside the Fuente del Berro park. On 27 January 1926 the City Council removed the earlier “Calle de Valeria” and replaced it with “Calle de Iturbe.”
Gregorio Iturbe Aldalur came from Ituren, in Navarre. He made his fortune as deputy secretary of the Biscay Mutual Insurance Society and multiplied that capital in Bilbao’s property boom. With that experience he bought land on the Altos del Hipódromo in Madrid and decided to build his own garden city there.
In 1912 he founded La Propiedad Cooperativa, a society of some 400 members that dreamed of single-family houses in the style of the garden colonies of Holland and Britain. The first phase brought together 184 concrete villas, each with garden, bathroom and hot water. In May 1926 the first 21 homes opened. A second phase, built between 1926 and 1929, added another 184 houses. The two colonies, Iturbe I and Iturbe II, make up what we now know as the Colonia de la Fuente del Berro.
Iturbe’s appetite did not stop there: he also launched Iturbe III, Iturbe IV and the famous Parque Residencia. Calle Iturbe keeps the name of the man who wanted to bring the gardened houses of northern Europe to Madrid.
Its names
- Calle de Valeria1903
- Calle de Iturbe27-01-1926
Sources (5)
- Colonias históricas madrileñas. Fuente del Berro (Colonia Iturbe 1) — Arte en Madrid
- Colonias históricas. Fuente del Berro (Colonia Iturbe 2) — Arte en Madrid
- Gregorio Iturbe, el promotor de las principales colonias jardín de Madrid — casarural.madrid
- Colonia Iturbe-1 — Arquitectura de Madrid, FCOAM
- Callejero oficial del Ayuntamiento de Madrid — Portal de datos abiertos