The road that today constitutes the street was laid by Francisco Pizarro when he founded the city of Lima on 18 January 1535. In 1862, when a new urban nomenclature was adopted, the road was named jirón Arica, after the province in Tacna. Prior to this renaming, each block (cuadra) had a unique name:
Block 1: [La] Toma, after the mouth of the water intake located there.[2]
The Edificio Santo Toribio was built in the street's intersection with the Jirón Huancavelica in 1923 by Fred T. Ley & Cía, an American company. The three-storey, 925.30 m2 work is part of the set of real estate projects undertaken by the Archbishop of Lima, Emilio Lissón, in the 1920s to strengthen the economic activities of the archdiocese.[12]
On 2 January 1935, a violent accident took place on the street's corner with jirón Callao, when Carlos González Crusalegui was run over by a tanker that violently steered to avoid a head-on collision with another tanker. González, who was violently thrown against a wall, was taken to the nearby Public Assistance Hospital [es], later being transferred to the Clínica Villarán and finally to Dos de Mayo National Hospital.[13]