The Magnolias del Protomedicato

These two magnolias are the oldest living thing on the block where Buenos Aires first taught medicine. They flank the entrance of a primary school built over the site of the Protomedicato, the Viceroyalty's medical tribunal founded by Miguel O'Gorman, which also held the city's first Hospital de Hombres and its first school of medicine. Argentina declared the pair Historic Trees by national decree in August 1969, and the city has looked after them since. How old they are is an open argument, and the city's own register runs both ways on a single page. Its text says the Bethlemite order planted them at the end of the 19th century, which would make them around 140. The same page, and every other source that mentions them, says more than 200 years and ties them to the Bethlemites' 18th-century work on this ground. The likeliest reading is a slip between XVIII and XIX, so we carry the older claim with the doubt attached rather than picking a winner. You look at these two rather than walk up to them. The school is in daily use and its grounds are closed to visitors, so the place to stand is Humberto Primo itself, or the doorway of the San Pedro Gonzalez Telmo church opposite, which is where the photographs get taken from. It is half a block from Plaza Dorrego, so the detour costs nothing.