The Former Banco do Brasil Headquarters
1901, converted 1999 to 2001
Stand on the corner of Rua Álvares Penteado and Rua da Quitanda and look up at the rounded corner tower with its dome and its stacked balconies. The building was put up in 1901 for a bank, at a time when São Paulo was suddenly rich on coffee and this triangle of streets between the cathedral and the São Bento monastery was its financial heart. The facade is in the eclectic taste of the period, with rusticated stone at street level, tall arched windows, garlands and cartouches, and at the top the initials of Banco do Brasil worked into the ornament. It was built to look solid, because that is what a bank wanted its customers to feel.
Walk around the outside before you go in. The corner is designed to be seen from three streets at once, and the ornament grows richer as it rises, from plain masonry at the base to the sculpted brackets and finials of the roof. Notice the wrought iron gates at the entrances, with their curling plant forms, and the lamps mounted on the walls. Inside, the plan is a hollow square: offices around the edge and a great top-lit atrium in the middle, the classic layout of a nineteenth century bank.
The building was remodelled in the nineteen twenties as the bank grew, and Banco do Brasil kept offices here until the nineteen nineties, when the financial district had long since moved to Avenida Paulista and beyond. Rather than sell the building, the bank restored it and opened it in 2001 as the third Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil. The restoration kept the marble, the ironwork and the stained glass, added lifts and climate control, and turned the banking hall into a gallery. Today the building is a listed monument and one of the reasons the historic centre has come back to life.
Did You Know? The bank's initials, BB, are carved into the stone cartouches of the facade, so the building still announces its first owner more than a century later.
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