Great Central Mexican Foundry

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• | History

The foundry was located in what was once Rancho El Sillero, today it is the subdivisions; Fundición, Los Sauces, part of Las Brisas and San Cayetano.

This Foundry was owned by Mr. Salomón Guggenheim, it was one of the most modern metallurgical companies in America, as it was the first to use electricity for the smelting of metals. The raw material for the operation of the furnaces came from the Tepezalá, Palo Alto and Asientos mines.

The economic situation at the beginning of the 20th century, and the workers' strikes in 1903 and 1909, would begin to weaken the company's economy. Finally, in 1925, the Great Central Mexican Foundry would announce its move to San Luis Potosí, where it would enter a worse crisis that would finally lead to its sale.

In 1927, two years after arriving in San Luis Potosí, Salomón Guggenheim would sell the factory to dedicate his life to his collection of American art. As a result of the good years of managing the copper and silver mines in Mexico, Guggenheim would become one of the richest men in the country. That same year, he would marry the Baroness Hilla Rebay von Ehrenwiesen, with whom he would found several museums in the world and in 1937 they would create the foundation for modern art "Salomón R. Guggenheim", which continues to operate today with three museums, one New York, another in Venice and the last in Bilbao.

From that hill in Aguascalientes, where seven gigantic chimneys emerged from a gray cloud, today only a refractory brick oven survives, which stands on the corner of Segundo Anillo and Camino a San Ignacio.

The Great Mexican Central Foundry, together with the Railway, would be the engines of the economic development of Aguascalientes during the first half of the 20th century, however they would also leave in their wake environmental devastation, which we continue to suffer to this day.

The site occupied by the foundry in the state was and continues to be, one of the spaces with the greatest contamination in soil and subsoil in Aguascalientes, with the total lack of interest of past governments, the environmental problem would extend to surround the nascent subdivisions of Fundición, Los Sauces, part of Las Brisas and San Cayetano, leaving evidence of this damage environmental, known as "Cerro de la Grasa", an elevation of black rocks, toxic waste product of metal smelting.