↙ El cerro Manquehue, siempre presente hacia el poniente, desde las terrazas en altura y desde la planicie norte del predio, al borde de la quebrada. The Manquehue hill is always present to the west, from high terraces and the property's northern plain, at the edge of the ravine.
In the valley in the 50s, whose upper limit is the El Bollo irrigation canal, plots of land were distributed and trans- formed into farms with fruit trees and weekend houses. The buildings were spaced between the crops, and the owners´ houses and tenants coexisted. The valley´s image was that of orchards planted in an orderly way, with medium and small agricultural properties, with straight curtains of poplars in divisions or channels. There were also access avenues of deciduous trees, large in size and easy to reproduce, such as elms, acacias, and oriental plane trees. The coloring was yellow-beige in autumn and light green in spring. It was complemented by hawthorns, litres, and native shrubs on sunny hillsides above the canal and sclerophyll vegetation in the ravines. In the 1960s, the plots were subdivided into 3000 to 5000 m 2 sites. A new transformation process began in the density and quality of tree planting. New tree-lined streets appeared with homogeneous or diverse species and the sites changed from orchards to ornamental gardens, with pools and trees with a variety of color, height, volume, and origin. On the plateau between the hill and Las Condes Avenue, a homogeneous park was created, with a visual blending of species developed on private properties and transformed into a mass of trees that is a collective landscape asset and the buildings can be seen through it. In the 80s and 90's San Carlos de Apoquindo was ur- banized, with structuring avenues, incorporating palm trees in the center median, and houses with small plots of land where there was no room for large trees. It is a neighborhood dominated by buildings. The former working-class neighborhood, which had been established to the east of the El Bollo canal, was eliminated in 1982. Between Las Condes Avenue and Charles Hamilton, residential buildings appeared in the wooded areas. In the streets, the trees from the previous era were replaced by pyramid-shaped species smaller in size and with brighter colors, such as liquidambar and tulipero, which were planted in single or double rows.
El barrio. Etapas de desarrollo urbano
En la ocupación del sector, se pueden reconocer cuatro etapas históricas. Ellas originaron la conformación de la actual urbanización con su arborización. En la primera etapa, las avenidas con grandes árboles, las antiguas casas de la hacienda Lo Fontecilla y el parque que la rodea –remodelado por Prager en los años 30– componían un conjunto cuya presencia valorizó el sector. Era el centro de cultivos de grandes extensiones, praderas naturales para los animales, espinos en laderas asoleadas y árboles siempreverdes en las quebradas. En los años 50 en el valle, cuyo límite superior es el canal de regadío El Bollo, se distribuyeron parcelas que se transformaron en quintas con frutales y casas de fin de semana. Las construcciones estaban distanciadas entre los cultivos y convivían las casas patronales y las de los inquilinos. La imagen del valle era la de huertos plantados en forma ordenada, de propiedades agrícolas medianas y pequeñas, con cortinas rectas de álamos en divisiones o canales. Se levantaban, también, avenidas de acceso de árboles caducos, de gran envergadura y de fácil reproducción, como olmos, acacios y plátanos orientales. Se apreciaba un colorido amarillo-beige en otoño y verde claro en la primavera. Lo complementaban espinos, litres y arbustos nativos, en lomajes asoleados sobre el canal y la vegetación esclerófila en las quebradas. En los años 60, se subdividieron las parcelas en sitios de 3 mil a 5 mil m 2 . Se inició un nuevo proceso de trans- formación en la densidad y calidad de la arborización. Aparecieron nuevas calles arboladas con especies homo- géneas o diversas y los sitios cambiaron el huerto por el jardín ornamental, con piscinas y árboles con variedad de colorido, altura, volumen y procedencia.
Monastery site
Brother Martin recalls that «in 1950 when we moved in, only hawthorn trees covered the hill. The surrounding area consisted of agricultural plots with a few trees: poplars and eucalyptus. There were a few tenant houses, animals grazing, and little collective movement. In short, a rural environment». (3) Elm trees were planted on the access road, on the hillsides, and on sunny slopes, fruit orchards, olive, almond, apricot trees, and vines were planted in rows, combined with a shady forest of insigne pines to the southeast, and the untamed vegetation was reserved on the hillsides near the summit or those with steeper slopes. The existing hawthorn grove is considered a bastion of the original situation. On the hillside between the monastery buildings and the neighborhood park located on the Las Condes Avenue plane, there is a strip of hill cliff and ravines with areas of native vegetation, hawthorns, and birches, which separate the two areas and preserve the site´s viewpoint and silent intimacy. The agricultural-artisanal sector is located on the lateral plains, to the north, bordering the San Francisco ravine and, to the east, the canal and Bulnes Correa Street, in a north-south direction
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AOA / n°46
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