Teusaquillo
Teusaquillo is the 13th town in the Capital District of Bogotá. It is located between the north and the center of the city.
Toponymy
The name of Teusaquillo, like that of Bogotá, dates back to pre-Columbian times. The original name of Teusaquillo refers to the Plaza del Chorro de Quevedo, where the Spanish built a military siege before the founding of the city.
Physical geography
Limits
Northwest:  Locality of Engativá (UPZ Fairs and Botanical Gardens; Avenue 68) | North: Location of Barrios Unidos (UPZ Parque Simón Bolívar and Los Alcázares; Avenida José Celestino Mutis) | Northeast: Locality of Chapinero (UPZ homonym; Caracas Avenue) |
| West: Locality of Fontibón (UPZ Texas Farms; 68th Avenue) |  | This: Locality of Chapinero (UPZ homonym; Caracas Avenue) |
| Southwest: Locations of Puente Aranda (UPZ homonym; West Railway Avenue) | South: Location of Puente Aranda (UPZ Industrial Zone) and the Martyrs (UPZ La Sabana) Avenida de Las Américas | Sureste: Locality of Santa Fe (UPZ Sagrado Corazón y Las Nieves; Avenida Caracas) |
Altitude
- Media: 2558 m.s.n.m
Extension: The total and urban area of the town is 1,420 ha.
- Hydrology
The territory of the town is located mostly in the Salitre basin and to a lesser extent in the Fucha river basin. Within these two basins, the water system is basically made up of the artificial lake of Simón Bolívar Park and by fractions of the canals, which are part of the city's rainwater sewage system. These channels are the extension of water sources that are born in the Eastern hills.
Salitre Basin
- Río Arzobispo: is the corrected extension of the river of the same name crosses the eastern part of the town to Carrera 30 from which it continues as channel El Salitre.
- Canal El Salitre: From Carrera 30 in front of Ciudad Universitaria, passing through the Estadio El Campín to 63rd Street, where you continue your course in the town of Barrios Unidos.
Fucha Basin
- Canal San Francisco, as a prolongation of the river of the same name, which before becoming a canal goes through the center of the city in the area of Las Aguas.
Topography
Teusaquillo is located in a relatively flat area of the Bogotá savannah with a slight slope to the northwest, in an area where the characteristic eastern hills of the city have already ended.
The area of this locality is located in geomorphological unit IV that presents a flat and slightly inclined topography and is made up of Quaternary deposits that correspond to terraces, alluvial plains, alluvial cones and colluvium. Regarding the soils, it should be noted that almost the entire territory is urbanized.
History
The current town of Teusaquillo was part of the territory of the Muiscas. At the beginning of the Spanish colony and until 1601 it was the indigenous reservation of Teusacá, but its population was displaced to the reservation of Usaquén and its lands handed over to the landowners. During the Independence it continued to be a mostly rural area, headquarters of some haciendas and agricultural and livestock areas.
20th century
In the early 1920s, construction began on a large urban project to the north of where the current town of Santa Fe is located (at that time the main southern exit from downtown Bogotá) and to the south of what it was the hamlet of Chapinero, and it was decided to also give it the name of Teusaquillo. This important residential area of Teusaquillo was inaugurated in 1927 and the neighborhood quickly established itself as the most elegant and contemporary of the time, a symbol of the 1930s and the flourishing and urban development that Bogotá had in its fourth centenary.
In the Teusaquillo neighborhood, various architectural trends manifested themselves, the Victorian style being very notable. At present, most of these houses are preserved, many converted into offices or commercial premises.
The capital's upper class lived in Teusaquillo, who moved from the historic center of the city. This tendency was favored by the Bogotazo in 1948. Characters such as Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, Enrique Santos Montejo, Laureano Gómez, Gustavo Rojas Pinilla, Otto de Greiff and Mariano Ospina Pérez lived there.
It marked a very important milestone for urbanism and architecture in the capital, with works by architects such as Alberto Manrique Martín, Karl Brunner and Guerra Galindo. Due to the demographic and architectural characteristics of the neighborhood, it can be considered equivalent to the neighborhoods of San Fernando in Cali, El Prado in Barranquilla, Manga in Cartagena and Prado in Medellín.
The diversification of styles and the influence of modern architecture in Teusaquillo was stimulated by the arrival in the neighborhood of the Syrian-Lebanese and Jewish communities, which built two synagogues in the town, one of them the first in the city.
In the 1930s, the Hipódromo de la 53 opened in 1934 (where the Galerías Shopping Center is currently located), then the construction of the great University City began (in May 1937) and which included the Alfonso López Stadium, which was inaugurated that same year along with a basketball Coliseum, the Ciudad Universitaria was fully completed by 1945. In 1938 the Nemesio Camacho Stadium was completed on the land of the El Campín Hacienda on the old Avenida de Cundinamarca.
It was the part of the capital that most benefited from the works carried out by presidents Enrique Olaya Herrera, Eduardo Santos and Alfonso López Pumarejo, but especially from the work of mayor Jorge Eliécer Gaitán for the city's birthday. In Teusaquillo, the sports competitions of the Bolivarian Games of 1938, based in Bogotá, were held in its two stadiums and the university coliseum.
In 1951, the Nemesio Camacho El Campín Stadium was rebuilt with a capacity for 40,000 spectators and became the most important sports arena in the country.
During the following decades, new neighborhoods appeared around Teusaquillo, which little by little ended up uniting it to the north with Chapinero. This consolidated the project that had been thought of when the urbanization of Chapinero began, as the first satellite neighborhood of the Capital and was incorporated into the urban area of the city in 1954.
In 1961 the construction of the Simón Bolívar Park began near the University City, 7 years later the commemorative Temple for the Eucharistic Congress of the visit of Pope Paul VI to Bogotá and the street around the Temple and the Park was called Avenida del Congreso Eucarístico, today known as Avenida Carrera 68.
On the occasion of this Congress, the Covered Coliseum, the Tennis Center and the Campincito Stadium were also inaugurated in 1968, fulfilling the will of Don Nemesio Camacho and his son regarding the completion of the Sports Center around the Campin Stadium.
Shortly thereafter, on the land occupied by the old 53rd Street racetrack, the Sears department store opened, giving its name to the neighborhood in which it was located. Today it is the Galerías shopping center and when it changed its name, the neighborhood changed its name with it.
In 1972, when the Special District of Bogotá divided the Metropolitan Area of the city into 16 main neighborhoods to which it gave the character of a zone, the Teusaquillo sector and the neighborhoods that proliferated around it, were declared in the nomenclature as Zone number 13 of the Colombian Capital and a Minor Mayor's Office was constituted, establishing its determined limits and being administered by a Minor Mayor, appointed by the mayor of the Special District. This decree was ratified through the 1977 agreement.
In the 1980s, an important Industrial and Commercial sector developed in an area of Teusaquillo called Quinta Paredes, which with its subsequent growth ended up uniting it with the Puente Aranda area. With the visit of Pope John Paul II in 1986, a new Temple was built, which is still preserved as a national monument. In Teusaquillo, the most important papal Eucharist in Colombian lands was celebrated at that time.
During the 1990s, a gigantic urban project emerged in Bogotá, called Ciudad Salitre, which sought to cover the sector that separated the areas of Teusaquillo and Fontibón, having the El Salitre neighborhood as its center. During the years of this decade, Ciudad Salitre was consolidated and extended both towards the western and eastern part. Ciudad Salitre Oriental and all its nearby residential sectors became part of the Teusaquillo area, while Ciudad Salitre Occidental became part of Fontibón and El Salitre continued to be part of Barrios Unidos.
With the constitution of 1991 when the Special District became the Capital District, Teusaquillo was elevated to the category of Locality and its Minor Mayor's Office became a Local Mayor's Office, later its Local Administrative Board and its councilors were regulated.
In 2018, the Movistar Arena was inaugurated on the same site formerly occupied by the El Campín Coliseum.
20th and 21st century
Some parts of the town of Teusaquillo have undergone remodeling with the arrival of the TransMilenio system to Caracas avenue and North-Quito-South avenue and the improvement of its streets, platforms and its public space in general. It has a varied cultural, commercial, residential offer, and sports complexes and shows of great importance.
Human Geography
Its local mayor's office is located in the La Soledad neighborhood on Calle 39 B Number 19 - 30. The town has more than 150,000 inhabitants, 2.5% of the total urban area of Bogotá.
In the town of Teusaquillo, the Capital District has established 6 neighborhoods of great importance and breadth in the town as zones or UPZ (Zonal Planning Units), the population corresponds to the year 2000:
- The Emerald, 35,856 inhabitants
- Galleries, 33,685 inhabitants
- Teusaquillo, 29,162 inhabitants
- Fifth Paredes, 24,316 inhabitants
- Ciudad Salitre Oriental, 23,330 inhabitants
- Simón Bolívar Central Park, 2,840 inhabitants
The UPZ Parque Central is located in the town, one of the three parts into which the Simón Bolívar Metropolitan Park is divided in the city, the rest of it is located in the UPZ Parque El Salitre in Barrios Unidos and in the UPZ Botanical Garden in Engativá.
In addition, the UPZ Ciudad Salitre Oriental is located in the town, while the UPZ Ciudad Salitre Occidental and the UPZ Modelia are located in Fontibón, these three make up the set of neighborhoods popularly known as Ciudad Salitre, divided between these two towns.
Territorial organization
Cundinamarca, Acevedo Tejada, Quirinal, Camavieja.
- 100 Galleries: El Campín, San Luis, Chapinero Occidental, Galerías, Banco Central, Quesada, Belalcázar, Alfonso López Norte, Palermo.
- 101 Teusaquillo: La Soledad, Santa teresita, La Magdalena, Teusaquillo, Las Américas, La Estrella, Armenia.
- 106 The Emerald: Pablo VI, Nicolás de Federmán, Campin Occidental, Rafael Núñez, La Esmeralda, El Quirinal.
- 107 Quinta Paredes: Acevedo Tejada, El Memoria, Gran América, Centro Nariño, Quinta Paredes, Ortezal.
- 109 Ciudad Salitre Oriental: Ciudad Salitre Su-Oriental, Ciudad Salitre Nor-Oriental.
Transportation
The most important roads in Teusaquillo are Carrera 68, Calle 63, Calle 53, Carrera 24, Avenida Eldorado. 30th Avenue and Caracas Avenue. In its main roads it has public service routes for buses, minibuses and collectives and TransMilenio that reach all the neighborhoods of the town and communicate it with the entire city.
It has two large bridges on Calle 63, one at the junction with Carrera 30 and the other, the largest and most complex, at the junction with Avenida Carrera 68 and which continues the road to Engativá. Also famous is the roundabout on Calle 63 that separates Teusaquillo from the town of Barrios Unidos and the Virgilio Barco Library and the Aquatic Complex of venues such as the El Lago Metropolitan Park or the Palacio de los Deportes.
- Public transport
The TransMilenio system is located on Avenida Caracas (line A), Avenida NQS (line E) and Avenida Eldorado (line K). In the town there are the stations Calle 26, Calle 34, Avenida 39, Calle 45, Marly, Calle 57 and Calle 63 in the eastern part of the town, the stations Avenida Eldorado, Universidad Nacional, El Campín - Universidad Antonio Nariño and Movistar Arena towards the downtown area and the Centro Memoria, Bogotá Council, Ciudad Universitaria, Fairgrounds, Quinta Paredes, Gobernación, CAN and Salitre - El Greco stations to the west of the town.
The town also has sections of the Ciclorutas network, which in the Simón Bolívar park extend for more than 5 km. The Bogotá savannah train crosses the town near the Virgilio Barco Library, operating as a tourist transport on weekends and as a cargo transport on weekdays.
Population
For the 1973 census, when the Minor Mayorship had already been established, Teusaquillo registered a population of 127,521 people, which gradually increased for the 1985 census, in which it already had 132,501 inhabitants, however a small reduction was registered for the 1993 census since the population had declined to 126,125 inhabitants.
In the year 2000, only the 6 UPZ of the town registered a population of 149,189, finally in 2017, Teusaquillo had &&&&&&& &&0140767.&&&&&0140,767 inhabitants. The poverty index is 1.60%, being the lowest in the district followed by chapinero with 3.20 %, their monthly per capita income is 911722 COP (High).
Economy
In addition to the residential area, there are various commercial, entertainment and service establishments, both economic and public administration. The educational centers are mostly private and have top-level technical and university institutions.
However, there is currently a particular phenomenon of hidden economic ruin among the inhabitants who occupy the architecturally beautiful houses in the La Soledad and Teusaquillo neighborhoods, who must resort to state aid for their survival (SISBEN, community kitchens, etc..). It is estimated that, based on the above, 25,000 people from the locality who occupy these neighborhoods are in a situation of poverty.
Among its residents, the middle and upper classes predominate, mostly professionals and artists. It is a completely urbanized town, with many green areas such as the Simón Bolívar park and the University City. In addition, it has several channels of small rivers such as the Arzobispo and the Salitre. Historically, the name of the territory corresponded to the current Chorro de Quevedo in La Candelaria. Currently, the town adjoins Santa Fe, Chapinero and Los Mártires, the most traditional of Bogotá. Together with these two towns, the group of neighborhoods that are distinguished by portraying different periods of the city's history is formed. Two of its symbols, the Simón Bolívar Metropolitan Park and the El Campín Stadium have undergone changes in recent years.
The area of the town is 1,419 hectares and its population in 2018 is &&&&&&&&&0140767.&&&&&0140,767 inhabitants, although the floating population is estimated to be more than &&&&& &&&&0400000.&&&&&0400,000 people. Teusaquillo is made up of six UPZ: Galerías, Teusaquillo, Parque Simón Bolívar, La Esmeralda, Quinta Paredes and Ciudad Salitre Oriental.
On the other hand, in 2013 the agreement was signed to start the construction process of a new administrative headquarters for the town. The building will be built at Carrera 30 with Calle 40.
As for the Teusaquillo neighborhood itself, it occupies the territory located between Calles 32 and 37, and Avenida Caracas and Carrera 19.
Public services
Education
In addition to different universities, the town enjoys having the University City. There is the Bogotá headquarters of the National University. Distinguished institution of the university academic and scientific history of Colombia. Also a prominent sector of university institutions in the Palermo neighborhood around 45th Street.
University City
Under the government of Alfonso López Pumarejo, Law 68 of 1935 was issued, the Organic Law of the National University, which gave rise to the university campus on the former land of Hacienda El Salitre; located between streets 26 and 53, and races 30 and 50. Thus allowing the centralization of the university that since its foundation in 1867 was scattered throughout the center of the city. The design of the architect Leopoldo Rother stands out.
Culture
- The Virgilio Barco Public Library, located in its south-eastern sector, is one of the largest in the city, opened in 1999. It highlights its design, made by the architect Rogelio Salmona.
- Casa Museo Jorge Eliécer Gaitán
- Monument to Jaime Garzón
- Corferias.
- Park Way,
- National Library
- Movistar Arena
- Architectures of the neighborhoods La Soledad and Teusaquillo.
Sports
El Campin Stadium
The El Campín Stadium underwent a remodeling of its entire history for the year 2000 on the occasion of the local qualifiers for the 2002 World Cup and the 2001 Copa América, the surrounding areas, the entrances and the the stands, becoming the most modern football stage in the country with a capacity of 48,310 spectators. And in 2010-2011 other changes on the occasion of the 2011 U-20 World Cup in Colombia.
Simon Bolivar Park
Since the late 1990s, with the project to expand Simón Bolívar Park, new works were built for this sports complex in the town of Teusaquillo. They are its event square with capacity for 150,000 spectators, the park has the largest stage in the country, also having a large lake in the center, areas for practicing aquatic and extreme sports, as well as large green areas and malls.. Because it has various areas dedicated to specific activities, it is a conglomerate of parks.
Aquatic Complex
The Simón Bolívar Aquatic Complex, inaugurated in 2004 for the National Games, has a capacity for 4,000 people and is the most modern in South America, it has International Olympic and Semi-Olympic Pools.