The Old and New Rio de Janeiro

For its first 250 years, Rio de Janeiro grew slowly, but calmly. Even the coming of the Portuguese royal court in 1808 did not greatly change life or the city itself. The impact of Dom Joao's move to Rio was more a matter of a change of degree than of substance. New houses were built and a few new streets and buildings were added as Rio de Janeiro struggled to absorb 15,000 refugees from Europe. With the King came the Royal family - and princes, viscounts, barons, servants, clergy, bureaucrats, etc. Even so, change was orderly. New houses and buildings were built and the urban area expanded continuously. Most 19th century visitors wrote glowing repoorts of the beauty and grace of the city and its sometimes exotic inhabitants.

Around 1900, with the dawn of a new century, Rio began to change. In 50 years at least 6 major projects were to change the face of the "Cidade Maravilhosa" - some for better, others for worse... These were:

1. Construction of Central Avenue (Avenida Rio Branco)
2. Removal of Castle Hill (Morro do Castelo)
3. Removal of Santo Antonio Hill (Morro do Santo Antonio)
4. Removal of Senate Hill (Morro do Senado)
5. Building of Santos Dumont Airport
6. The Flamengo landfill (Aterro do Flamengo), including Gloria.
7. Construction of Presidente Vargas Avenue
and
8. Building the dreadful elevated 'perimetral' avenue across the historic bayfront.

Map of Old /New Rio Click on the icon to see the outline of a 2000 tourist map of Rio superimposed on a 1838 representation of the city. What I did was do an outline of major streets and points of interest, make the background transparent, and then reajust the size and angle to fit an old map of Rio. Of course, the match is not exact, but it is close and it demonstrates well the changes occuriung in the last 100 years. The major changes are identified on the map by numbers 1 to 7, and other points of refenece are given letters A to S. Most of this is from memory, so I may be off a few years on some items.

The yellow color represents landfills into the bay. Except for the coast near Ilha das Cobras (Snake Island), a naval base, all the original bay beaches and landings are now 100-500 feet from where they were in 1838. In the some cases this distance is even greater. The Santa Casa Hospital and Santa Luzia church once stood next to the bay... Now they are almost 1 kilometer (5/8s of a mile) from the water across the Airport and Aterro, of a little less in the direction of Praca 15 and the Old Palace (Paco) near the ferryboat landing (barcas). Click here for an old picture of Santa Luzia church, taken from Castle Hill, in front of what was Santa Luzia beach.

The dark blue lines are new streets, mostly carved out of areas where the hills used to be. The light blue lines are old traditional streets, put in to be used to align the two maps being superimposed. 1. The first, greatest and most successful change was building Avenida Central (soon renamed Rio Branco), tearing a straight line almost 2 kilometers down the middle of old Rio, from Maua square at the docks to the bay near the Public Park (Passei Publico) just beyond Castle Hill. Clearly the inspiration for this was Paris. This was a great project, resulting in an elegant avenue that was as nice as any street in the world. Great! A+

2. After the success and accolades from construction of Rio Branco Ave, The Rio city government decided that there was no more space - what they needed was land. But there was no unused, vacant land in the center, so they looked for a run-down area that could be demolished. Well, there was one area that would not only give them space, it would provide land for landfill. That was Castle Hill (Morro do Castelo), an old area at the end of Rio Branco, mostly covered by old, deteriorated houses and a couple of run-down churches. The only small problem was that this was the historic heart of Rio. No matter! From From about 1920 to 1924 the old Hill, and all its historic buildings and churches was leveled - flat!. The dirt amd rock was used to start building the Aterro and area near Santos Dumont airport. Worst of all, they replaced the old hill with wide avenues and very uninspired buildings. Give the urban planners a big fat F on this one.

3 and 4. Even so, most City officials considered leveling Castelo Hill a big success, so they looked around for more hills, casting their eyes to Santo Antonio Hill and Senate Hill. Down they came. Where Santo Antonio Hill was, now stands the ultramodern cathedral, a somewhat interesting building because of the form and glasswork, and the Petrobras and BNDEs (or BNH?) buildings. Sadly there was another old convent up on the hill and it is partially gone. At least they did not touch the Arcos, the old aqueduct from Jesuit times. Where Senate Hill was is now the heart of Lapa district, with Nem de Sa avenue running right though it. I give a C grade for the removal of Santo Antonio hill, and a B grade for Senate Hill, which was probably not a big loss.

5. With the dirt and rock from these hills, the City began to reshape the bay area, extending the land several hundred yards into the bay. As aviation began to assume a primary role, one of the initial projects was to add an airport. I think it was in the early 1930s that work on Santos Dumont airport began, which was to serve both flying boats and land based aircraft.

6. The landfills into the bay served two purposes, to add land for urban beautification, including new beaches and gardens, and to provide a base for new routes to the southern areas on the Atlantic. Remember, up until the 1930s, Copacabana was remote and largely ignored. The avenues built on the first landfills provided a much faster link than was possible through the twisted narrow streets of Lapa, Gloria and Botofogo. With gardens and beaches, the shoreline today is quite different from the way it was up until the 1920s. Basically there was a sea wall, and then there was the bay. Only in Urca can one have an idea of how the beach front used to look. Overall, the landfills were positive. Give them an A grade for this.

7. In the old pictures one can see the towers and dome of the Candelaria cathedral surrounded and crowded in by buildings. I think it was in the early 1940s that the oficials decided they needed another avenue, even wider and grander than Rio Branco. Two old streets extended north from each side of the Candelaria church, one was Rua Sao Pedro and the Rua do Sabao (Soap Street!). I don't think it was too difficult to decide that by leveling all buildings between these two street would provide a spendid avenue ending at the Candelaria, also great for parades. Click here for a detailed view of this, once again based upon the 1838 map. All things considered, I would give them a grade B for this.

8. Last and worse was the building of the elevated highway across the front of the bay in the old city. This was a crime against the City of Rio. It is unspeakably ugly and even as a traffic artery, it is a failure. A big super F grade on this.

Here is an alternative view. This is an 1817 map superimposed on a recent satellite photo. The Castle Hill and Santo Antonio areas on the old map have been made transparent, as has been the water in Guanabara Bay. The two images were aligned based upon the Candelaria and Santa Luzia Churches. One thing is very obvious: how much Rio had grown between this map (1817) and the one used above (1838). In the older map, everything around and beyond Santo Antonio and Senate Hill is rural -- by 1838 these areas and many more had been urbanized. I have also added lines to indicate Rio Branco and Pres. Vargas Avenues

Maps of Rio. This is a page that traces the historical development of Rio through maps. I doubt that there is any other city in the Americas -- and I include even the very historic cities of Mexico and Lima -- which has as much detailed historical information from such a variety of sources, as does Rio de Janeiro.

Anyway, here are some of the graphics used on this page, or related to the subjects here.

Page updated: june 2004