History of the Pier of Guayaquil

The link between the city and the river goes back to the construction of The New City, when the City council decides to make use of the extensive savanna that extended toward the south of the original location.

Colonial Period

During the colonial period, the pier was hardly a narrow path in roadway form. In 1845, it has a mile and a half of long and it is now a place to walk by with wooden seats and illuminated by cast iron lamps. According to the tourist Frederick Walpole," ten at night is the vogue time for walks or strolls, and the pier is the youth's gathering place."

Strollers in the Pier

In 1866, Frenchman De Gabriac relates the sociability that was generated among the walkers of the pier": Between seven and nine, the big street that skirts the port is full with people. An infinity of women dragging their long undulant dresses and strolling alone hiding under thick mantels can be seen. A small Indian girl of five or six years, dressed in red or yellow follow the most elegant ones. The women of the richest world mingle with the bourgeois ones, the workers and the dressmakers; they relate one with another, sitting on the same benches and speaking colloquially."

Wall and filling

In 1879 the wall of the pier was erected and the northern part was filled for the second time. In 1866 A.D. Pipper was hired to cover all its extension, to a height three times that of the previous one. In 1906, J.F. Lince presented the city council a project for the enlargement of the pier, from Las Peñas to “Mercado del Sur” (South Market), which was finally discarded.

Foreigners' walkway

In 1931, according to ordinance, Paseo de las Colonias is created “from the place located in front of General Elizalde street, until the south end of the Pier, in the old Conchero."

The Rotunda – Memorial monument to the liberators’ encounter, Bolivar and San Martin, in Guayaquil - and the Clock Tower, of Moorish style, they are the most outstanding architectural landmarks in this walkway, which represents the definitive incorporation to the tourist axis of the city.

By: Historian Angel Emilio Hidalgo