Maria Pace Chiavari
Industrialization: early days
Brazil’s first industrial upsurge took place between 1890. Its first settlement and capital city, Rio de Janeiro was the ideal cradle for this new process, with almost half a million residents. Home to the exiled Portuguese Court, the city also benefited from its unique geographical location and topography, with a natural port that was among the most important in the South Atlantic. From the financial and commercial standpoints, capital built up through coffee growing and foreign trade was encouraged by easy financing through major banks headquartered in the city, together with an ample workforce consisting largely of migrants from other parts of Brazil and foreign immigrants from elsewhere in the world. The consumer market expanded beyond the city’s boundaries, encompassing areas served by newly-built railroads. Another aspect of the utmost importance for modern industry and its operations was power provided by engines instead of water,1 with new establishments springing up around energy sources.
In just a few years, factories, mills, steam engines and railroads spread through many neighborhoods, bringing a new scale of magnitude to an urban fabric that was still at colonial. While weaving mills were set up around water sources in neighborhoods like Laranjeiras, Jardim Botânico and Bangu, workshops, printshops, smelters, metalworking complexes and food processing plants sprang up downtown, in the Centro district, 2 with this final category encompassing the Moinho Fluminense flour mill.
More than a hundred years later, a stroll through downtown Rio reveals its patchwork history, where spaces and buildings constructed at different times today interweave and overlap, like footprints left by events on its urban fabric. Deep in the heart of this urban jigsaw, the Moinho Fluminense mill is a heritage site,3 earning this title by the many memories that it embodies, since construction began on this complex in 1877. However, acknowledging the historical value of buildings dating back to the initial phase of the Industrial Revolution is usually a sluggish process in Brazil, and in Europe as well.
As massive reconstruction projects drew to a close in the UK, rebuilding districts bombed out in World War II, there was a rising wave of interest in repairing and conserving relics of its first Industrial Revolution, many of them dating back two hundred years. Rediscovering the past and exploring it became a way of appreciating this history.
This opened up a new field of study in the cultural heritage field, which is today known as Industrial Archaeology.4 [I]
In Brazil, a cultural asset related to industrial history was listed as a heritage site for the first time in 1964. [II]
In Rio de Janeiro, there are many examples of aging industrial buildings repurposed for modern uses. Good examples are the old Nova América weaving mill in Del Castilho, which shut down its operations in 1991 and reopened as a mall in 1995; in the Santo Cristo district, the Fábrica Bhering factory was turned into an art and culture center in 2010.
[I]
Industrial Archaeology
A phrase coined in the UK during the 1950s, “industrial archaeology” draws attention to the conservation of “industrial monuments”, which were defined as “industrial heritage assets” in 1959 by the Council for British Archaeology.
This involves the study of buildings or fixed structures of some type that retain traces of an industrial culture, as well as the appearance and development of production processes.
[II]
Brazil Acknowledges its Industrial Past as a Cultural Heritage
The “industrial heritage” concept was included in the IPHAN bylaws through Article 1 of the Venice Charter for the Conservation and Restoration of Monuments (1964).
The first industrial culture heritage asset listed by IPHAN in 1964 was the nation’s earliest railroad operations and manufacturing complex: the Real Fábrica de Ferro São João de Ipanema in Iperó, São Paulo State.
