Escandón, Antonio (1824–1877)

Antonio Escandón (b. 1824; d. 1877), Mexican entrepreneur. The younger brother of the notorious Mexican moneylender Manuel Escandón, he was born in Puebla. He married Catalina Barrón, daughter of Eustaquio Barrón, another influential moneylender of the period. Escandón spent the years of the French Empire in Europe trying to raise funds for building a railroad from Mexico City to Veracruz, a project that was completed in 1873.

Escandón is also noteworthy for his commitment to the beautification of Mexico City following the fall of the empire. He believed that the national government should make the newly renamed Paseo de la Reforma into a Mexican version of the Champs-élysées with streets intersecting to form traffic circles. In 1877, to celebrate the completion of the railroad, Escandón presented the city with a statue of Christopher Columbus that still stands in the second glorieta (traffic circle) on the Paseo. Ironically, he died in Europe, on a train en route from Seville to Córdoba.

See alsoMexico: 1810–1910; Railroads; Mexico City.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Luis García Pimentel, El monumento elevado en la ciudad de México a Cristóbal Colón (1872).

Barbara A. Tenenbaum, "Development or Sovereignty: Intellectuals and the Second Empire, 1861–1867," in The Intellectuals and the State in Mexico, edited by Charles Hale et al. (1991).

Additional Bibliography

Zavala, Silvio Arturo. En defensa del Paseo de la Reforma. México City: Universidad Iberoamericana, División de Arte, 1997.

                                    Barbara A. Tenenbaum