Augusto Ivan de Freitas Pinheiro and Eliane Canedo
Research and contributions: Cristiane Titoneli
What’s so special about Gamboa?
Paraphrasing the lyrics to an old samba song, explaining what’s so special about the Gamboa district is no easy task. Halfway along the route running parallel to this bayfront, once winding but now forced into a huge straight line by human engineering, it is still there, where it has always been, particularly its wharf, with the towering cranes that are today preserved forever as massive sculptures on the skyline of the new port.
However, there are other material and immaterial relics that bear witness to the earliest settlers, foreign courtesans, tragic slaving ships, people terrified by cannonballs fired by French corsairs, frightened immigrants seeking opportunities in a hot and humid new land, tourists seeking festive thrills, and goods being loaded and offloaded, ranging from coffee to cars. All this helped shape the history of the Brazilian people and the nation’s economy.
The best way to understand what’s so special about Gamboa is to just let go, floating on these memories and others through its broken terrain that was tamed by force, its old inlets and beaches, dried-out mangrove swamps under the landfills of the modern port, the rocky hillsides now hidden behind the walls of tall buildings that were built here.
Gamboa of sighs and sobs drifting from the old slave cemeteries and ships that left these fragments of humankind almost dead on its wooden jetties, ripped from their homelands.
Gamboa of shadows that sometimes haunt us. The best way is to wander at random through its streets and alleys, without seeking architectural complexes or monuments that we usually admire in historic cities, without hoping for the harmony of a cluster of buildings, and without the unity found there. Essentially a historical and heritage district, it must be perceived as a place that is constantly changing, where diversity stalks us on every corner.
The charm of the neighborhoods forming the Rio Docklands does not lie in their streets and cramped townhouses, their gentle hills where Machado de Assis once romped. There are no rolling landscapes here, no tourism attractions, no lifestyle. As happened to singer-songwriter Antonio Carlos Jobim, you can be anywhere in the world and feel a breath of nostalgia for the “crazy stuff” that comes from Gamboa:
When I walk through Soho
I remember Gamboa
Ay-ay-ay, so crazy
Oh my god, how good
There behind the Port Wharf
In the Ladeira da Preguiça alley
Where suckers are stillborn
Where there’s only great people
Who don’t know what homesickness means
They don’t know this dilemma
They haven’t tasted this poison
They never had an olive-skinned girl
Oh my god, how good
To meet you in this city
When I turn the corner
I run straight into nostalgia
Ay-ay-ay, so crazy
Oh my god, how good 53
A place of heritage and history, Gamboa is intangible but also concrete. There is a mill there, with a metal framework and exposed brickwork, with gryphons protecting its façade. A unique and majestic feature of the city, it was once used to grind wheat and pack flour, like those used during the Industrial Revolution in the UK; it could well form the background to a Dickens novel.
When the Gianelli brothers (Carlos and Leopoldo, born in Uruguay to Italian immigrants) disembarked in the Praça Mauá plaza in 1880, they were eager to expand their wheat grinding and flour making business into Brazil. And they were probably so enchanted by the famous Rua Larga de São Joaquim, (currently Rua Marechal Floriano) that they decided to open their business in this square.
However, they soon moved to the nearby Praça da Harmonia plaza, which was closer to the wharf. At that time, the entire area was affected by the renovations of the Port of Rio and its operations, built on the landfill covering the old market dock. A small oasis in the heart of the docklands that was hidden by its complex topography, the Praça da Harmonia plaza is today crossed by Light Rail Vehicle (LRV) rails, fulfilling the old dream of interlinking the docklands neighborhoods, and connecting them to the rest of the city.
This was the site of some of the most interesting architecture and historical events in this region, and even the entire city. They are recorded in the cramped space bordered by the string of small townhouses dating back to around 1900, their eclectic designs adorned by panels painted in 1960 by bucolic naïf artist Nilton Bravo.
Nearby, the striking Baroque church of Nossa Senhora da Saúde (1743) perches atop its modest headland, with evident relics of the old Saúde quarry that provided rocks for the foundations of local buildings. On its rubble stands a charming housing complex in contemporary architectural style: the Moradas da Saúde cluster of 150 lego-style homes designed in 2000 by architects Demetre Anastassakis and Claudia Pires (2000).
The route leads on to the discreet grandeur of the 5th Military Police Barracks (1908-1914), designed by architect Heitor de Melo. It looks more like a small castle, with its tower and row of windows overlooking the bust of Paraguayan War hero Colonel Assunção in the center of the plaza, guarded by a dog and a cannon; the geometrical façade of the Abrigo da Boa Vontade shelter (1939) designed by Modernist architect Affonso Eduardo Reidy; and recently repurposed facilities housing the new Aquário do Rio, the aquarium built in 2016 by architect Alcides Horácio de Azevedo, all close by.
Towering over everything in the neighborhood with its portentous scale is the serene beauty of the imposing industrial building that houses the Moinho Fluminense mill (1887/1927), with its protective gryphons, built in eclectic industrial style by architects Antonio Jannuzzi and his brother. These two Italian immigrants were in charge of the construction of one of the most unforgettable buildings in the city’s portfolio: the striking Moinho Fluminense mill. Like Borges’ Aleph, it could gather together everything together here in one place, hidden in the heart of the Docklands forever: the Guanabara Bay, the city of Rio de Janeiro and its Port, the Docklands region and its Gamboa district, the Praça da Harmonia plaza, the beautiful mill and the history of wheat in Brazil.
Each thing (…) was infinite things, as I saw it clearly from all points in the universe. I saw the teeming sea; I saw dawn and dusk; I saw the multitudes of America; I saw a silvered cobweb in the center of a black pyramid; I saw a splintered maze (it was London); I saw endless eyes watching themselves closely in me like a mirror; I saw all the mirrors on earth and none reflected me; in a yard on Rua Soler I saw the same tiles that I’d seen thirty years before at the entrance of a house in Frey Bentos; I saw bunches of grapes, snow, tobacco, metal strips, steam; I saw convex equatorial deserts and each of their grains of sand; (…) I saw the Aleph from all points; in the Aleph I saw the Earth, I saw my face and my guts (…). I felt infinite veneration, infinite pity. 54
