The Rolé Carioca’s 6th edition begins with a true city “classic”: the Rio Branco Avenue. Inaugurated on the 20th century by the name of Central Avenue, it is part of a time of grand urbanistic intervention along the city. At the same period, many of the old houses, from the colonial era, after Dom João VI’s arrival, were torn down. By this time the city expanded its limits to the suburbs and the south. While these places still kept its residential character, the city - as the downtown was once called - used to be where people would go looking for amusement, news and information.
All the changes were a part of Rodrigues de Alves (1902 - 1906) government platform, including sanitation and extinction of the endemic areas inside the capital of the time. In order to acquire success in this project, the president named the engineer Pereira Passos as his mayor, responsible for the constructions intended to make Rio the “Paris of the tropics”, and as director of Public Health Service, the doctor Oswaldo Cruz. At the time, one of the most prominent initiatives was the opening of Central Avenue, which in 1912 began to be called Rio Branco Avenue (which remains until today), paid homage to Foreign Minister Rodrigues Alves, José Maria da Silva Paranhos Junior, known as Barão do Rio Branco.
As it became one of the most important avenues of the city, with intense traffic, Rio Branco changed drastically: the first buildings gave place countless skyscrapers and business centers all the way through it’s course. Just a little fraction of the historical constructions remains from the threshold of this century. The most recent reformation, which generated the Olympic Boulevard and the VLT path, intended to reach for it’s original purpose: a meeting spot, way more opportune space for walks, surrounded by the Theatro Municipal, the Museu de Belas Artes, Cine Odeon, each one offering a large amount of cultural entertainment close by the business center composed of Largo da Carioca e Uruguaiana.
The architectonic complex of Praça Marechal Floriano was widely modified on the 70’s, but still represents the best expression of the carioca academic urbanism next by Rio Branco Avenue. The name has it’s origins from the history of Companhia Cinematográfica Brasileira and the businessman Francisco Serrador, whom came up with the idea of a cinema/theater complex inspired on the Broadway from the 20’s in New York. Only a few structures from the originals are still in place, where it used to be the ancient Convento da Ajuda: the Fontes building (Praça Floriano 55), Heidenreich (Rua Álvaro Alvim, 24), Natal (Rua Álvaro Alvim, 48) and Odeon (Praça Mahatma Ghandi, 2).
The modernist edifice from 1952 distinguish itself from the neighborhood because of it’s innovative curly façade. The technique used by the architects gives to the structure a dynamic, moving appearance. This movement sensation was originally reinforced by a structure with individual moving parts in aluminium used to protect the construction from the strong solar rays, posteriorly removed. It is noticed the integration of the ground floor with the street across a ramp, paved with the same kind of portuguese stone from the sidewalk, an extension of the public space.
By the time of Avenida Central inauguration, several buildings were brought to life for big clubs as the Jockey Club and the Derby Club, neighbours interconnected on the corner of Almirante Barroso street. Farther on, there was the first building of the Clube de Engenharia (Engineering Club) wich fell apart. The remainings of the later became the Club Naval. The access is between the chamfer between the façades. Bezzi, the architect, added, in a Luis XVI style, neogreek elements to the front facing the Rio Branco, some of which were modified when the fourth floor was closed and they created a fifth floor, in 1928.
One of the oldest streets in Rio, with registers of it’s existence around 1578, then called Rua Desvio do Mar. It’s present name was given due to the location being the old spot of the “ouvidores”, as the magistrate used to be called during the Portuguese Empire. In Brazil, the ouvidores were judges nominated by the landlords before there were governors and vice-Kings. For this reason, this street started being called Rua dos Ouvidores since middleway the 18th century. It became really important through the centuries having it’s highest point during the 19th and 20th centuries, when it became the epicenter of the best stores and bakeries of the city, kind of a high society open aired club.
Having it’s doors open since 1908, the Companhia Doca de Santos building - where Iphan is now installed - was built in celebration of the brazilian harbours to the international tradings, since D. João VI declared it in 1808. In every floor the front has it’s own stylistic construction. The most illustrious being, undoubtly, the central door in a neobarroch style engraved. The interior matches the academic ornamentation with industrial elements, including two transparent brick ceilings to receive natural light in both the unferior floors. There are panels paintings at the lobby.
Resisting from the first generation of Avenida Central buildings, this one had it’s construction done among the avenue, open it’s doors in 1906. Inside there’s a rotunda decorated with golden mosaic panels. On it’s front, neo-classic carrara marble columns and windows covered with garlands. The internal area is sheltered for a glass dome in a metallic structure made by Braine-le-Comte. It once was the headquarters to Caixa de Amortização until it’s extinction in 1967, when the space was splitted with Banco Central.
A civil construction march, it ruled Rio’s downtown at the time of it’s opening, in 1929. A symbol of the city’s progress and the use of technology of reinforced concrete. The use of 22 floors came up as a contrast of the common use of only 8 for this kind of construction. The project from french architect Joseph Gire and brazilian Elisiário Bahiana has it’s frontispiece and internal areas in an art decó style. The building had already sheltered studios and the legendary Rádio Nacional (National Radio) auditorium, center of the country cultural life until the TV coming and where Sílvio de Caldas, Francisco Alves, Cauby Peixoto, Orlando Silva, Emilinha, Marlene e Dalva de Oliveira circulated. It is the headquarters for Industrial Property National Institute (INPI) and wait for the possible return of Rádio Nacional.
It’s said that the spirits of Olavo Bilac and Arthur Azevedo are common visitors to the Theatro Municipal. Both writers were given to enthusiasm about the construction of this building, actually Bilac gave it’s inauguration speech in July 14th, 1909. The second one died 9 months before the Theatro conclusion, which took his ghost to hound the stage in an eternal attempt to say some words to the audience. According to some of the employees, the spectrum of former bailarinas, singers, violinists and composers still wander through the halls. The composer Carlos Gomes have been seen often, admiring his own statue through a window by the lateral rotunda of the theater.
“Yesterday the avenue was inaugurated. It’s pretty, decorated with flower-beds, chandeliers, etc. But the buildings are hideous. It is not that they’re ugly, on the contrary, they are elegant, adorned, cute; but they lack, considering the character of a street from our motherland, the majesty, the greatness, according to the place, to our majestic and solemn land. It comes with a certain shock that at the granite city, home of the enormous Corcovado monoliths, Pão de Açúcar, Pico do Andaraí, there is not a single granite-based building along this monster avenue. It rained for forever, and yet the avenue was full, of troops and people.” - Lima Barreto (1905)
“Oh! Progress! Poor city! Poor houses that crumble! Poor streets vanishing! Poor of my happiness that dissipates! This Avenue, boy, will be the path of doom! The stairway to heaven is thin and unsightly as the Slide; the road to hell is large, unconstrained, comfortable and beautiful! By thy tight trails only are able to go through the pure souls, but on large avenues all the sinful crowd is able to pass…” - Olavo Bilac (1904)
“If Rodrigues Alves, Lauro Muller, Passos and Frontin came back to life and watched it today, they wouldn’t recognize it for sure, so inhuman it became by the works of the so called progress. Since everything that used to invite the pedestrian, under the shadow of it’s trees, wouldn’t be found, a chaotic flow of drainage and hallucinatory traffic, polluted by gas, for high and monstrous ridges” - Brasil Gerson (1954)
A traditional space of the carioca imaginarium since 1894, took it’s name from Cristóvão Colombo as a homage from the founders, the portuguese Joaquim Borges de Meireles and Manuel José Lebrão. At the time the bakeries worked as the bars do nowadays, where everyone met, artists, intellectuals, politicians and bohemians that left a mark on Rio’s history would frequent. The tea saloom on the second floor, in a Luis XVI style, was inaugurated in 1922. The oval space between both floors, the skylight with stained glass windows and the the belgian mirrors on the lateral walls give a sophisticated and pleasant air to the environment. It is a part of the city’s artistic and cultural estate nowadays and has two other branches at the Aeroporto Internacional do Galeão (Galeão International Airport), the Forte de Copacabana (Copacabana Fort) and at CCBB- RJ.
Gonçalves Dias Street, 32
Monday to Friday from 9a.m to 7p.m, saturday and holidays from 9a.m to 5p.m.
Inaugurated on the verge of popularity of Cinelândia cinemas in 1926. It’s the last remaining cinema from the rooms that gave the region it’s name (including Império, Pathé, Rex, Vitória, Metro and Palácio). Went through a reformation in 2015 and renamed Centro Cultural Luiz Severiano Ribeiro (Luiz Severiano Ribeiro Cultural Center) - Cine Odeon, and receive events as Festival do Rio, Festival Internacional de Curtas do Rio (Rio’s International Short Films Festival) and Anima Mundi.
Floriano Square, 7
Program: https://www.cineodeon.com.br/
Start point of Rio Branco and also the Região Portuária (Port Area). Since 1910 with the inauguration of Porto do Rio (Rio’s Port), was a relevant docking point for ships bringing tourists and products to the city. Along the square surroundings are important buildings as Museu de Arte do Rio (MAR) and the Museu do Amanhã (Museum of Tomorrow), the edifice The Night, the first Rio’s skyscraper. Right at it’s core there’s a statue of Baron of Mauá, Irineu Evangelista de Souza, a businessmen from the Imperium. On weekends, Píer Mauá, still receiving international cruises, also have fairs, shows and gastronomic and cultural events in the restored warehouses around.
Program: htttp://www.piermaua.rio/