In this edition of Rolé Visita, we will unravel the story behind a postcard from Rio: the Botanical Garden. This important botanical research center in Brazil continues to perform this function and its role has expanded with time: it is also one of the most beautiful leisure spaces in the city, a large green space open to public visitation. The history of the Botanical Garden begins in 1808, when D. João VI established the Royal Estate with a very different goal from what people imagine today: the purpose of studying plants for commercial interests. At that time, botany was strongly linked to the usefulness of vegetables. The aim was to study and improve the development of crops, especially for crop adaptation to Brazilian climate and soil.
The activities of the garden begun at the same place where the Gunpowder Factory was installed, in the extensive and then distant Lagoa Farm Rodrigo de Freitas - possibly to keep the activities in secrecy. The first challenge was to acclimatize black tea, a species from China. The idea was to produce seeds and seedlings and distribute them among the provinces of the Empire, encouraging the exportation. Then the researches turned to the native species. Under the direction of Frei Lopes do Sacramento (1778-1829) and João Barbosa Rodrigues (1842-1909), the institution gained prestige among foreign scientists who sought knowledge about Brazilian flora. From the 1980s, when environmental issues began to take shape, studies on biodiversity and conservation of endangered flora gained momentum in the park.
Better known as a place where parades or horse races take place, Gávea's Hipódromo is also one of the most beautiful buildings from the early 20th century in Rio. Its construction marked the city's time, both from the architectural and engineering points of view . The grandstand stands out, with the grandstand covered by the long marquise whose extension in balance (without support or pillars) was the largest in Latin America in its time. Across the grandstand, the headquarters facade turns to Santos Dumont Square and recalls the Grand Trianon of Versailles.
Inaugurated in 2008, the year of the bicentennial celebration of the Botanical Garden, the museum was the first in Latin America devoted entirely to the socio-environmental theme. The space houses exhibitions, educational programs and debates dedicated to the sustainability of life and human activities.
The building was one of the production units of the Royal Gunpowder Factory of Lagoa Rodrigo de Freitas, responsible for the production of the explosive that supplied the entire Brazilian market. In the Moinho dos Pilões Workshop, the most dangerous stage of the explosive production process was carried out - the compacting of gunpowder. In addition to the building itself, where a mock-up simulates the workshop, a permanent exhibition features objects and fragments found in archaeological excavations.
In 1808, in the face of his concern to defend the territory of the colony from a possible attack by the French empire, after the Portuguese court escaped to Brazil, D. João VI ordered the immediate creation of a Gunpowder and Artillery Foundry. The chosen area in the Botanic Garden represented water in abundance for the manufacture of gunpowder and the necessary distance from the urban center and Saint Kitts - the royal family's place of residence - because of the danger of handling the explosive components.
From the original building of the former Royal Academy of Fine Arts, only the façade remained, preserved and transported to the park in the 1940s, at the insistence of the architect Lúcio Costa, then director of the National School of Fine Arts. Designed by the French Grandjean de Montigny and built close to Tiradentes Square, the building is considered the first neoclassical building in Brazil. It housed the teaching of Fine Arts until 1908, when the academy was allocated in the current National Museum of Fine Arts.
The cast iron fountain is authored by the Englishman Herbert W. Hogg of the city of Derby in the late 19th century. It was brought to the Botanical Garden in 1895 by the then director of the park, the botanist Barbosa Rodrigues. Highlight the four statues at the top of the fountain representing poetry, music, science and art.
The complete collection of the composer and maestro Antônio Carlos Jobim (1927-1994) is inside the Botanical Garden of Rio de Janeiro. The place was chosen to house the musician's memory for the love that Tom Jobim always showed for what he called "my beloved Botanical Garden". Besides the original and digitized collection, the space maintains a permanent exhibition with photos, original scores, personal objects and videos of the composer's presentations. The Institute develops projects for cataloging, preserving and making digital collections available to other artists, such as Lucio Costa, Dorival Caymmi, Chico Buarque and Gilberto Gil.
It is said that in 1829 the imperial palm trees began to bear fruit in the Botanical Garden. At that time, the species was a symbol of prestige in the Empire, given as a gift by the emperor as a form of recognition, and became very disputed. Intending to control the cultivation, the director of the Botanical Garden ordered that, every year, all the seeds should be burned. It turns out that the enslaved and the newly freedmen who worked in the garden found that selling the seeds through the smuggling market was a possibility of financial accumulation. The result: there is imperial palm tree everywhere…
The bad news is that the first coffee brew arrived in Brazil in a history composed of components that only love can explain: the military Francisco Palheta led a mission in 1727 to appease disputes with neighboring French Guiana. However, the real aim was to look for coffee beans, treasure of rare Ethiopian origin in the Americas of the early eighteenth century. Gallant and seductive, Palheta would have managed to get the French governor's wife to give him the seeds clandestinely, hidden in a bouquet of flowers, without letting her husband and all of France notice. A century later, coffee became the main export product of the country, putting Brazil on the map of the agricultural powers
The first migration of Chinese people to Brazil happened with the aim of stimulating and developing tea production. Around 1812, D. João VI encouraged this immigration for the cultivation of Camellia sinensis, a plant of Chinese origin from which so-called black tea is produced. The Botanical Garden was chosen as one of the plantation sites, but the business did not go forward. The Chinese who came were not farmers and there was the language barrier, interpreted as an artifice to hide the secrets in cultivation, which declined in the following decades.
Right next to the Botanical Garden, the residential complex between Mestre Joviniano and Estela streets can be considered a small piece preserved from the end of the 19th century. Part of the 220 houses of the working village built on the land of the former Chácara do Algodão underwent a recent revitalization process. The façades that had been decharacterized recovered the original layout, when they were erected for the families of employees of the Company of Wiring and Weaving Carioca and of the Company of Sanitation. It is a cohesive architectural complex, of rare harmony and vitality, that presents angles, perspectives and picturesque nooks and crannies. A valuable document of the history of Rio's manufacturing industry, which existed before the real estate valuation of the neighborhood. Today, some houses are open to visitors such as bars, restaurants and artist studios.
