Augusto Ivan de Freitas Pinheiro e Eliane Canedo
Pesquisa e colaboração: Cristiane Titoneli
Sweeping urban modernization
During the late XIX century, the area of the old city known as the Cidade Velha and its nearby port was still the most crowded district, although other neighborhoods were already springing up in the city.
There, offices, shops, depositories, workshops, shipyards and wooden jetties rubbed shoulders with two-story townhouses and single-floor homes, tenements, and old mansions split up into homes for countless families. An increasingly dense population with poor hygiene, barebones sanitation, and narrow streets that blocked breezes turned this area into a hotbed of epidemics each year. As urged by the public health specialists of that time, it was necessary to restore the health of the urban ‘organism’.29
It was at this time that the second Urban Enhancement Plan for Rio de Janeiro was drawn up by the Improvements Commission, in 1874. Prepared by engineer Beaurepaire-Rohan in 1843, its predecessor never got off the drawing board. Years later, Mayor Francisco Pereira Passos (1903-1908), who was also a member of this Commission, rated basic sanitation for the city as the main goal for his administration, implemented through restructuring its layout through opening up broad and breezy two-way streets.
Although the Brazilian Republic had been proclaimed, dissenting voices could still be heard, awaiting the right time to try to bring back the old regime. When Marechal Deodoro decided to shut the National Congress in 1891, after negotiations failed with parliamentarians representing the coffee-grower States, there was an uprising among Brazilian Navy vessels in the Guanabara Bay. Their threats to bombard the capital forced the President to resign, fearing that civil war was about to break out.
Briefly stifled, the mutiny flared up again two years later, when senior Navy officers demanded that elections be held immediately. From September 13, 1893, they engaged in heavy gunfire, bombarding the forts held by the Army. With seven forts under attack, Niterói temporarily ceased to be the Rio de Janeiro State capital, as the government fled to the hill town of Petrópolis, well beyond the range of Navy cannons. Without grassroots support, this attempt to take the nation’s capital failed, with the rebels setting out for southern Brazil.
The mill bore witness to many important and interesting events in the history of Brazil. One of them involved polymath Rui Barbosa, who fled from Navy officers who surrounded this region during the Fleet Revolt in 1893. A friend of Carlos Gianelli (one of the founders of the Moinho Fluminense mill who was born in Uruguay), Rui Barbosa sought refuge in this industrial complex, according to information drawn from the Centro de Memória Bunge heritage center and records for this property kept on file at City Hall. Port police occupied the mill buildings, which were pocked by bullets fired by rebels protesting against the Floriano Peixoto administration. Employees were injured, and its output dropped.30
As the XIX century drew to a close, a typical lifestyle was also fading. As the Brazilian Republic was established amidst sweeping political, administrative, urban and social reforms, the population of Rio de Janeiro reached 522,651 inhabitants: ten times larger than at the start of this century, and certainly far more diverse. The regime changed from Monarchy to Republic, the economy changed as coffee became Brazil’s top export, and habits changed as well, with families enjoying outings and shopping in the new downtown area, its old Portuguese style restructured to European tastes. The Centro district firmed up its status as a business hub.
Residential neighborhoods spread throughout the South Zone, following its string of ocean beaches. The North Zone stretched around the Tijuca massif, with homes for more affluent segments of the population, and outwards to the suburbs for lower-income families. This expansion followed the new railroads, which began to operate in 1858; from 1868 onwards, electric trams shuttled between the Rua do Ouvidor, a street famous for its bookshops, cafés and fashion boutiques, to the Largo do Machado square.
The early years of the XX century was a time of sweeping urban renewal, compared by experts to Haussman’s restructuring of Paris.31 It was implemented by Mayor Francisco Pereira Passos, with assistance from supporters like Lauro Müller and Paulo de Frontin. Public health specialist Dr. Oswaldo Cruz provided input on urban hygiene, together with treatment and vaccination against smallpox and yellow fever.
Between 1903 and 1906, the Sanitation and Beautification Plan for Downtown Rio de Janeiro ushered in the greatest changes to the city in the course of its entire history. Known as the Bota Abaixo knockdown scheme, the restructuring process introduced by the Mayor cut through Old Rio with wide thoroughfares, including the emblematic Avenida Central (today Avenida Rio Branco). Some five hundred colonial townhouses were torn down, replacing narrow alleys and cul-de-sacs with broader and better ventilated avenues, allowing sea breezes to blow away fears of the miasmas that used to hover over the old colonial town and torment its residents. Hundreds of trees were planted and sparrows were even imported from Europe, in order to brighten the downtown streets with their twittering. A new style of architecture also appeared, rooted in the old Academia de Belas Artes, with this Fine Arts Academy echoing the style ready widely adopted as standard by Europeans: Eclecticism, also known as the Romantic style.
