La Condesa

This guide to La Condesa in Mexico City traces the oval curve of its streets back to the Hipodromo de la Condesa, a horse racetrack opened in 1910 on land that once belonged to an eighteenth-century countess, and abandoned when the Mexican Revolution emptied its crowds and money. It follows the art deco apartment blocks that rose along that curve in the 1920s and 1930s, and a date, September 19, that recurs in the neighborhood's story three decades apart. Developers paved over the failed track's oval shape rather than straightening it, which is why the curve survives underfoot today.