Abstract
In 1916, having been forced to leave his work in Belgium after its invasion by Germany at the beginning of World War I, the English architect Barry Parker embarked upon a new project in Portugal.1 There, he was contracted as a consulting architect for the City of São Paulo Improvements and Freehold Land Company Ltd., the largest owner of land in the city of São Paulo, Brazil.2 The company had sought his advice mainly for the development of its estates in the Pacaembu Valley, but seen in retrospect Parker’s work offers a window onto an important turn-of-the-century, cross-cultural connection. Parker’s report on the São Paulo of his day provides both a rich account of contemporary practices and discloses many vicissitudes between the private and public urban sectors at that time.
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Notes
Barry Parker. “Two Years in Brazil,” Garden Cities and Town Planning Magazine 9, n. 8 (1919), 143–5.
On Barry Parker’s works in Brazil, see also Carlos Roberto Monteiro de Andrade, “Barry Parker em São Paulo: ressonâncias da idéia de cidade- jardim,” IV SHCU (Nov. 1996) and for Parker’s short biography in the Bibliographical Appendix.
Ernani da Silva Bruno, História e tradições da cidade de São Paulo v 3 (São Paulo: Livraria José Olympio, 1954)
Richard M. Morse, From Community to Metropolis. A Biography of São Paulo. Brazil (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1958)
Juergen Richard Langenbuch. A Estruturação da Grande São Paulo. Estudo de Geografia Urbana (Rio de Janeiro: Fundação IBGE, 1971).
Carlos Alberto Cerqueira Lemos, Arquitetura Brasileira (São Paulo: Melhoramentos, 1979)
Benedito Lima de Toledo, São Paulo, três cidades em um século (São Paulo: Duas Cidades, 1981)
Hugo Segawa, Arquiteturas no Brasil 1900–1990 (São Paulo: EDUSP, 1998)
José Geraldo Simões, Jr., Anhangabaú: história e urbanismo (São Paulo: Editora Senac, 2004).
Morse’s From Community to Metropolis; Warren Dean, The Industrialization of São Paulo, 1880–1945 (University of Texas Press, 1969)
Joseph L. Love, São Paulo in the Brazilian Federation, 1889–1937 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1980).
Ab’Saber, “Geomorfologia do sítio urbano de São Paulo” (PhD diss., FFLCH/USP, 1957). This exchange exemplifies an intense international as Ab’Saber’s work crowned a geographical approach promoted by Eurípedes Paula and French geographer Pierre Monbeig (Bibliographical Appendix). Ab’Saber stressed the importance of geographical circumstances to São Paulo’s historical urban organization.
Brazilian cities’ organization differed from that of Spanish-American cities. The latter were characterized by a regular geometry and by hierarchy imposed through King Philip II’s 1573 Ordinances. There was no such guidance from the metropolis in Portuguese colonies. There was some regularity in cities such as Salvador (1549) and São Luís (1612), but this was not the rule. During the seventeenth century, cities founded between Rio de Janeiro and Santos were organized along an orthogonal design. On architectonic and urban issues, see Lemos, Arquitetura Brasileira. On political economy and urbanism, see Paul Israel Singer, Economia política da urban- ização (São Paulo: Brasiliense, 1973). on Latin American scholarly production, see Gerald Greenfield, “New Perspectives on Latin American Cities,” Journal of Urban History 15 n. 2 (198): 205–14.
On Spanish influence in São Paulo, see Aracy Amaral, A Hispanidade em São Paulo: da casa rural à capela de Santo Antonio (São Paulo: Nobel/EDUSP, 1981).
Affonso Antonio de Freitas, Tradições e reminiscências paulistanas (São Paulo: Livraria Martins Editora, 1955).
Benedito Lima de Toledo, Prestes Maia e as origens do urbanismo moderno em São Paulo (São Paulo: Empresa das Artes 1996), 20. Morse explains that the four major arteries to the hinterland became known as the Mogiana, the Paulista, the Ituana, and the Sorocabana (From Community to Metropolis, 167).
Among others, see Eurípedes Paula, Contribuição monográphica para o estudo da segunda fundação de São Paulo: de pequena cidade de há meio século à grande metrópole de hoje (São Paulo s.c.p. 1936)
Adolfo Casais Monteiro, Os Italianos no Brasil: Ensaio histórico bibliográfico e jurídico sobre os bens, tradiçães e colaboração de elementos no Brasil (São Paulo: Nova Jurisprudencia 1945)
Pierre Monbeig, La croissance de la ville de São Paulo (Grenoble: Institut et Revue de Géographie Alpine, 1953)
Bruno, História e tradições 1954 Morse, From Community to Metropolis; Langenbuch, A Estruturação da Grande São Paulo,
Thomas Holloway, Immigrants on the Land: Coffee and Society in São Paulo, 1886–1934 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1980) Franco Cenni, Italianos no Brasil: “andiamo in’mérica” 1875–1975 Centenàrio da imi- gração italiana (São Paulo: Martins/Editora da Universidade de São Paulo EDUSP, s.d.)
Zuleika Maria Forlioni Alvim, “Emigração, família e luta. Os italianos em São Paulo: 1870–1920” (Master’s thesis, History/USP, 1983).
On the role and importance of hostelries for newly arrived immigrants, see Holloway, Immigrants on the Land (1980)
Hugo Segawa, “Construção de ordens. Um aspecto da arquitetura no Brasil: 1808–1930” (Master’s thesis, FAU/USP, 1988).
Scholars accentuate the carioca preponderance in national industry between 1880 and 1910: Richard Graham, Grã Bretanha e o início da modernização do Brasil, 1850–1914 (São Paulo: Brasiliense, 1973)
Richard Morse, Formação histórica de São Paulo (São Paulo: Difusão Européia do Livro, 1970), 148–156
Wilson Cano, “Alguns aspectos da concentração industrial” Formação econômica do Brasil (São Paulo: Saraiva, 1978)
Paul I. Singer, Desenvolvimento econômico e evolução urbana: análise da evolução de São Paulo, Blumenau, Porto Alegre, Belo Horizonte, e Recife (São Paulo: Companhia Editora Nacional/Editora da Universidade de São Paulo, 1968). According to them, until the 1910s, the state of Guanabara brought together favorable conditions to become the nation’s most important commercial and industrial center. By then, it was considered the third port in the Americas. During the 1910s, the state of São Paulo reached first place in the nation’s industrial park, and the city of São Paulo surpassed Rio de Janeiro in the years between 1920 and 1938. After that, the tendency for industries to concentrate in São Paulo state became even greater.
Several works deal with the relation between the coffee economic cycle and São Paulo’s spatial configuration. On contemporary perceptions in the 1930s, see Preston E. James, “The Distribution of People in South America,” Geographic Aspects of International Relations, Charles Colby, ed. (New York: Books for Library Press, 1938)
Pierre Monbeig, Ensaios de Geografia Humana Brasileira (São Paulo: Livraria Martins, 1940). With special emphasis on the history of the city are the works by Bruno, História e tradições; Morse, From Community to Metropolis; Dean, The Industrialization of São Paulo; Langenbuch, A Estruturação da Grande São Paulo; Graham, Grã Bretanha; and Love, São Paulo in the Brazilian Federation. On the coffee wave and city’s architecture and urbanism, see Lemos, Arquitetura Brasileira and “Arquitetura contemporánea,” in História Geral da Arte no Brasil, vol. 2. (São Paulo: Instituto Walther Moreira Salles, 1983); Toledo, São Paulo, três cidades; and Prestes Maia e as origens;
Nestor Goulart Reis Filho, Aspectos da história da Engenharia civil em São Paulo, 1860–1960, Cia brasileira de Projetos e Obras (São Paulo: Livraria Kosmos Editora, 1989)
Luis Saia, Morada paulista (São Paulo: Perspectiva, 1972).
For those works with an emphasis on economy and urbanization, see Sérgio Silva, Expansão cafeeira e origens da indústria no Brasil (São Paulo: Alfa-Omega, 1976)
Caio Prado, Jr., A cidade de São Paulo:geografia e história (São Paulo: Brasiliense, 1983).
On the first private vehicles and public transportation that emerged in São Paulo, see Joao Cruz Costa, Contribuição à história das idéias no Brasil (Rio de Janeiro: José Olympio, 1956)
Waldemar Stiel, História dos transportes coletivos em São Paulo (São Paulo: Editora McGraw-Hill do Brasil, 1978).
Several scholars investigated this theme. On the pioneering occupation, see geographers James, “The Distribution of People”; and Monbeig, La croissance de la ville de São Paulo. On urban configuration, see Paul I. Singer, Desenvolvimento econômico (1968)
Jorge Rezende Dantas, A nucleação central e a centralidade como estruturas de relações na organização do espaço intraurbano (São Paulo: FAU/USP, 1981). When the urbanization process took off in the 1930s, this rejected land belonged mostly to the public institutions and comprised the only central estates still available, which played an important role in the political process.
Luis Saia, Morada Paulista (São Paulo: Perspectiva, 1972). Saia belonged to a generation nurtured in the 1930s and had an influential role in the creation of the state agency for historical preservation.
Candido Malta Campos Filho, A Grande São Paulo: trabalhos e entrevistas de 1965 a 1973, (São Paulo: FAU/USP, 1973). In the late 1970s, FAU/USP professor and architect Campos Filho was the director of the first State Planning Division (COGEP).
Rebeca Scherer. Decentralização e planejamento urbano no município de São Paulo (PhD dissertation, FAU/USP, 1987). Sherer was a USP professor and municipal advisor in the 1980s.
On the political aspects of Joao Teodoro’s administration, see Howard Allen Marcus. “Provincial Government in São Paulo. The Administration of João Teodoro Xavier, 1872–1875” (PhD diss., Yale University, 1973).
On the importance of the Liceu, as the establishment became known, see Ricardo Severo, O Liceu de Artes e Oficios (São Paulo s.c.p: 1934)
Ana Maria Belluzo, “Artesanato, arte e industria” (PhD diss., FAU/USP: 1988). On positivism in Brazil
Robert Gabriel Nachman, “Brazilian Positivism as a Source of Middle Class Ideology” (PhD diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 1972).
Love, São Paulo in the Brazilian Federation, and José Cláudio Barrigueli’s edited volume, O pensamento politico da classe dominante paulista: 1873–1928 (São Carlos: Universidade Federal de São Carlos, 1986), offer a comprehensive analysis of paulista upper-class thought between 1873 and 1928.
Quoted in Bruno, História e tradições, 929. Tommazo Gaudêncio Bezzi (1844–1915) also designed the Ipiranga Museum (1885) and important works in Rio de Janeiro. The Prados also hired him to build the velodrome in 1897 (Nestor Goulart Reis Filho, São Paulo e outras cidades. Produção social e degradação dos espaços urbanos (São Paulo: Hucitec, 1994, 68)), initiating the construction of sporting arenas as another form of upper-class investment. The networks created in this process are at the root of both the Jockey Club and the Pacaembu Stadium construction during the 1930s.
Carlos Alberto Cerqueira Lemos wrote Ramos de Azevedo e seu escritório, the most extensive, careful, and complete work on Ramos de Azevedo’s life and work, as well the architecture of his time. There are other important sources, such as a 1920s contemporary commemorative edition, Album de Construções, which presented the collection of works attributed to Ramos de Azevedo’s Escritório. The brochure is both a commercial and official report on the office’s activities. See also J.F. Barbosa da Silveira, Ramos de Azevedo e suas atividades (São Paulo: Richuelo, 1941).
Anita Salmoni and Emma Debenedetti devoted a chapter, “Os colaboradores de Ramos de Azevedo,” to Azevedo and his Italian collaborators in their Arquitetura italiana em São Paulo (São Paulo: Perspectiva, 1981). But it was only after the 1970s that more complete works were published on the Escritório’s importance and place in São Paulo’s history.
In this sense, Ana Maria do Carmo Rossi Gonçalves’s undergraduate thesis, “A obra de Ricardo Severo,” (FAU/USP, 1977), was the first to focus on Ricardo Severo (Ramos’s partner) and the firm. Maria Cristina Wolf Carvalho explored the architectonic work of young Azevedo in “O etinerário profissional do engenheiro-arquiteto, protagonista da introdução dos modelos europeus em São Paulo, na virada do século,” Cidade: Revista do Departamento do Patrimônio Histórico 5 no. 5 (1998):4–19, São Paulo: Secretaria Municipal de Cultura.
José F. da Rocha Pombo, História de São Paulo (São Paulo: Companhia Melhoramentos de São Paulo, 1918), 115–116.
See Richard Morse, From Community to Metropolis: A Biography of São Paulo, Brazil (1974), 175 Plínio Ayross, “Nomenclatura das ruas de São Paulo,” Revista do Arquivo Municipal, 43 (1938), 157; Bruno, História e tradições, 1028, 1150, and 1446.
“Planta da Cidade de São Paulo,” Companhia Cantareira de Esgotos, 1881, and “Nova Planta da Cidade de São Paulo,” 1891, reproduced in Benedito Lima de Toledo, Prestes Maia e as origens do urbanismo moderno em São Paulo (São Paulo: Empresa das Artes, 1996).
In 1954, celebrating anniversary of the city of São Paulo, Álvaro Gomes da Rocha Azevedo Filho wrote the biography of his grandfather Joaquim Eugênio de Lima (1845–1902). In 1872, Lima launched the newspaper Omnibus. In 1873, the government granted Lima a forty-year period of privilege in all public park works. Lima also created the newspaper A Cidade de São Paulo. See Gomes, Um pioneiro em São Paulo: Joaquim Eugenio de Lima: o urbanista, o jornalista, o filantropo (São Paulo: Ed. Revista dos Tribunais, 1954).
Quoted in Maria Cecilia Prado, O prédio Martinelli: ascengao do imigrante e vertical- ização de São Paulo (São Paulo: Projeto, 1984); Toledo, Prestes Maia e as origens
Raquel Rolnik, A Cidade e a lei. Legisdlação, política urbana e territórios na cidade de São Paulo (São Paulo: Studio Nobel, 1997), to illustrate the process of suburbanization in São Paulo.
Jeffrey Adelman, “Urban Planning and Reality in Republican Brazil: Belo Horizonte, 1890–1930” (PhD diss., Indiana University, 1974), 27.
There is a rich and extensive bibliography on this topic (produced after 1970) in the Edgar Lewenworth archive, UNICAMP; e.g. Paulo Pinheiro and Michael M. Hall, A classe operária no Brasil: documentos 1889–1930 (São Paulo: Alfa Omega, 1979)
Francisco Foot Hardman, Nem pátria nem patrão: Vida operária e cultura anarquista no Brasil (São Paulo: Brasiliense, 1983)
Hardman and Victor Leonardi, História da Indústria e do trabalho no Brasil (São Paulo: Global Editora, 1982).
On the mineird political generation, a rich contribution comes from the work of Amilcar Martins Filho, “The White-Collar Republic: Patronage and Interest Representation in Minas Gerais, Brazil, 1889–1930” (PhD diss., University of Illinois, 1986)
Marshall C. Eakin, Tropical Capitalism: The Industrialization of Belo Horizonte, Brazil (MacMillan, 2002), and British Enterprise in Brazil: The St. John d’El Rey Mining Company and the Morro Velho Gold Mine, 1830–1960 (Durham: Duke University Press, 1989).
Jan Fiola, “Race Relations in Brazil: A Reassessment of the ‘Racial Democracy’ Thesis,” Program in Latin American Studies Papers Series 24 (University of Massachusetts at Amherst, 1990), 7.
Octavio Ianni, Industrialização e desenvolvimento social no Brasil (Rio de Janeiro: Civilizção Brasileira, 1963), and Raças e classes sociais no Brasil (Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira, 1966).
Pierre Bourdieu, “What Makes a Social Class? On the Theoretical and Practical Existence of Groups,” Berkeley Social Journal of Soociology 32 (1987), 1–17.
For a complete account, see Dirce Mendes, I. Poleti, and L. Soares, “A formação do Grupo Light. Apontamentos para a sua história administrativa,” Memória Eletropaulo 24 (1997): 35–65.
For a better understanding of the electrical sector in Brazil, see the ELETROPAULO publications, among them the Memória Eletropaulo journal and Duncan McDowall, The Light: Brazilian Traction, Light and Power Company Limited, 1899–1945 (University of Toronto Press, 1988).
Geraldo Ferraz. Warchavchik e a introdução da nova arquitetura no Brasil: 1925–1940 (São Paulo: Museu de Arte de São Paulo, MASP, 1965, 5).
Roberto C. Simonsen, A evolução industrial no Brasil (MisSão Universitária NorteAmericana, mimeo, 1939), 57–59.
José Geraldo Simões, Jr., “O setor de obras públicas e as origens do urbanismo na cidade de São Paulo” (Master’s thesis, FGV/SP, 1990), 71.
From the social spectrum, see Teresa A. Meade, Civilizing Rio: Reform and Resistance in a Brazilian City, 1889–1930 (University Park, 1997). The Brazilian elite’s plan to transform its capital into a Parisian-inspired “civilized” metropolis turned out to be a socially segregating public policy.
See Vera Ferraz, Vila Economizadora: projeto de conservação e revitalização, (São Paulo, 1978)
Nabil Bonduki, Origens da habitação social no Brasil. Arquitetura moderna, lei do inquilinato e difusão da casa própria (São Paulo, 1998).
Marco Osello, “Planejamento urbano de São Paulo 1899–1961: introdução ao estudo dos planos e realizações” (Master’s thesis, Fundação Getúlio Vargas, São Paulo, 1983), 56. Among the many plans representing different social arrangements of the period was engineer Alexandre de Albuquerque’s project, which congregated a partnership among public agencies, landowners, and prominent businessmen.
José Bovo, “Desenvolvimento econômico e urbanização. Influência do capital inglês na estrutura urbana de São Paulo: 1850–1930” (Master’s thesis, University of São Paulo, 1974).
Source: Barry Parker, “Two Years in Brazil,” Garden Cities and Town Planning Magazine 9(8): 143–151 (London: Garden City Association, 1919), p. 150.
Thomas Palmer, Jr., “S. Paulo in the Brazilian Federation. A State Out of Balance” (PhD diss., Columbia University, 1950), 122.
Elias Saliba, Idéias econômicas de Cincinato Braga (Brasília, 1983), 26.
Thomas Waverly Palmer, Jr., “S. Paulo in the Brazilian Federation. A State Out of Balance” (PhD diss., Columbia University, 1950), 47. Accordingly, other books on this theme were published only after Vargas came to power in 1930, and they soared in number after 1932.
Saliba, Idéias econômicas (1983): 35.
Saliba, Idéias econômicas (1983): 415–417.
Horace Davis, “Brazil’s Political and Economic Problems,” Foreign Policy Reports 11, no. 1 (1935), 2–3.
See Cincinato Braga, Erros da economia pública. Lições da Rússia (São Paulo, 1931).
Luther Worstenholm, Joseph Rowntree (1836–1925): A Typescript Memoir and Related Papers (York: 1986), k4.
To the mayor’s cabinet were linked the Municipal Treasury and the General Secretariat, comprised of five directorates, including the DOP. Rebeca Scherer, “Decentralização e planejamento urbano no município de São Paulo,” (PhD diss., University of São Paulo, 1987).
Claudio Bertolli Filho, “Epidemia e sociedade: a gripe espanhola no município de São Paulo” (Master’s thesis, history, FFLCH/USP, 1986), is a study about this epidemic and its effects on paulista society.
On this subject, see Angela Gomes, Burguesia e trabalho. Politica e legislação social no Brasil 1917–1937 (Rio de Janeiro: Editora Campus, 1979)
James Woodard, A Place in Politics, Sâo Paulo, Brazil, from Seigneurial Republicanism to Regionalist Revolt (Durham: Duke University Press, 2009). Gomes explored the social legislation debates in the 1920s and its political context—from the oligarchical groups’ cleavage during José Bernardes’s election to the enactment of the Foreigner Expulsion and the Eloy Chaves Law, to the creation of an advisory board (the Conselho Nacional do Trabalho, CNT), representative of both entrepreneurs and employees. Woodard reconsidered paulista republicanism, its political culture, criticism and opposition to write a political history of the paulista society. Woodard focused on political participation and the formation of a public sphere to draw a detailed account of the mechanisms of oligarchic politics.
Marco Osello, “Planejamento urbano de São Paulo 1899–1961: introdução ao estudo dos planos e realizações” (Master’s thesis, EAESP/FGV, 1983), 127. Municipal engineer Cintra and state engineer Francisco Prestes Maia based their plan on the work of German municipal advisor Joseph Stübben (1845–1936), French preservationist and urban planner Eugène Alfred Hénard (1849–1923), and American architect Daniel Burnham (1846–1912). Burnham was the creator of the City Beautiful movement and the model for Prestes Maia and DOP director Victor Freire. Toledo, Prestes Maia e as origens
After retiring, Freire opened his own private firm, the Paving and Public Works Co., of which he was director and president (1926–1932). Freire not only kept influential positions all his life in both private and public sectors, but also was a key international broker. He was bestowed different honorific titles: councilor (Greece), delegate to the International Highway Association (Brazil), and a member of the English and the American Engineering Institutes. Ronald Hilton, Who’s Who in Latin America, vol. 2, (Stanford, 1971), 98.
Gabriel Ayres Netto, comp. Código de obras “Arthur Saboya” (São Paulo: LEP/Manuais Técnicos LEO, 1950).
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© 2010 Cristina Peixoto-Mehrtens
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Peixoto-Mehrtens, C. (2010). Public and Private: Crossed Paths in the Paulista Process of Urban Consolidation. In: Urban Space and National Identity in Early Twentieth Century São Paulo, Brazil. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230114036_2
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