Inspired by Parisian urbanist Baron Haussmann's renowned modernization of the City of Lights, Mayor Torcuato de Alvear took office with a similar mandate in 1880. Inheriting a rapidly growing city hamstrung by a typically colonial grid of narrow streets, his most ambitious project would be a boulevard connecting the Retiro section (north of downtown) to the growing neighborhoods of Recoleta and Palermo to the northeast (at the time merely suburbs). Bella Vista Street was widened and lengthened, reaching northwest into Palermo and, upon its inaugural in 1885, was renamed in honor the Mayor's father, Carlos María de Alvear (one of Argentina's early leaders).