Francisco Prestes Maia

Francisco Prestes Maia
22nd Mayor of São Paulo
In office May 1, 1938 – November 10, 1945
Preceded by	Fábio da Silva Prado
Succeeded by	Abrahão Ribeiro
41st Mayor of São Paulo
In office April 8, 1961 – April 7, 1965
Preceded by	Adhemar de Barros
Succeeded by	José Vicente Faria Lima
Personal details
Born	March 19, 1896 Amparo, São Paulo
Died	April 26, 1965 São Paulo

Francisco Prestes Maia (Portuguese pronunciation: [fɾɐ̃ˈsiʃku ˈpɾɛstʃiz ˈmaj.jɐ]) (1896–1965) was a Brazilian architect, civil engineer, urban planner, and professor, who served three terms as mayor of the city of São Paulo.

Biography

Amparo, São Paulo — birthplace of Prestes Maia

Francisco Prestes Maia was born to Manuel Azevedo Maia and Carolina Prestes on March 19, 1896 in Amparo, São Paulo, a small town 120 km north of the capital city.

In 1917, Prestes Maia completed his engineering and architecture degree at the POLI, Polytechnic School of São Paulo (Portuguese: Escola Politécnica da Universidade de São Paulo).^[1] In 1918, he set up a real estate office and also began working for the São Paulo state government.

From 1924 to 1927, Prestes Maia taught architectural drawing courses part-time at his alma mater, POLI.^[1][2] He was promoted to full professor in 1927 and taught for another ten years. In 1937, he left the university in order to be able to continue working for the city.^[1]

From 1926 to 1930, he served as the city’s Secretary of Transportation and Public Works. In 1930, Prestes Maia published his “Study for a Plan of Avenues for the City of São Paulo” (Estudo de um Plano de Avenidas para a Cidade de São Paulo). The Plano de Avenidas was given an award at the Fourth Pan-American Congress of Architects at Rio de Janeiro in July 1930.^[1]

He met Maria de Lourdes Costa Cabral e Abreu in 1930 in Rio de Janeiro, where she was on tour with an opera troupe from Portugal. The couple where not able to live together until the death of Prestes Maia’s mother in 1935, since Maria had been divorced and Carolina Prestes did not approve of their relationship. The two were not able to officially marry until late in his life, given that divorce was still illegal in Brazil and her ex-husband was still alive.^[2] They had no children.

In 1938 Prestes Maia was named mayor of São Paulo for the first time by Ademar de Barros, the interventor for the state of São Paulo at the time. He would be appointed again by Lucas Nogueira Garcez in 1942, immediately following his first term. After completing his second term, he left office on November 10, 1945^[2] — roughly the same time that the same time that the Estado Novo was ending and democracy was restored to the country.

Prestes Maia had two unsuccessful bids for political office following the overthrow of Getúlio Vargas.

In 1961, Prestes Maia was finally elected by popular vote and began his third term as mayor of São Paulo in 1961.^[2]

Francisco Prestes Maia died in São Paulo on 26 April 1965.

Map of São Paulo (1924)

Prestes Maia and his Plano de Avenidas had a lasting impact on the geography of São Paulo. ^{[3] [4] [5] [6]}

On August 27, 1997 the city of São Paulo passed a law (Lei nº 12.443) creating the Prestes Maia Urbanism Award (Prêmio Prestes Maia de Urbanismo) to be awarded every four years^[7] with the idea of proposing initiatives in urban planning and engineering.^[8] The Prestes Maia Award has only been given twice, in 1998 and in 2006.^{[8][9][10][11]}

Toponyms

Roadways

Avenida Prestes Maia

São Paulo street sign

Francisco Prestes Maia has many streets named for him throughout his home state of São Paulo. The largest of these is Avenida Prestes Maia, an arterial expressway in downtown São Paulo^[12] that is part of the North-South Corredor (Corredor Norte-Sul).

Traffic on Avenida Prestes Maia in central São Paulo

Many municipalities in Greater São Paulo — as well as some in the so-called interior of the state — have at least one street named, Avenida Prestes Maia or some derivation thereof, e.g., Avenida Francisco Prestes Maia, Avenida Doutor Francisco Prestes Maia, etc.:

• São Paulo^[13]
• Amparo^[14]
• Campinas^[15]
• ABC Region
  • Santo André^[16]
  • São Bernardo do Campo^[17]
  • Diadema^[18]
• Caraguatatuba^[19]
• Panorama^[20]
• Araçatuba^[21]
• Votuporanga^[22]
• Osasco^[23]
• Carapicuíba^[24]
• Guarujá^[25]
• São Vicente^[26]

Rodovia Prestes Maia (BR-101)

Map of BR-101

Brazil’s longest highway, BR-101, is also still popularly known as Rodovia Prestes Maia for much of its 4,800 km (3,000 mi),^{[27][28][29][30][31]} despite having been officially renamed more than a decade ago to honor another politician from São Paulo, Mário Covas.^[32]

Rodovia Governador Mário Covas, as BR-101 has officially been known since 2001,^[32] passes through twelve Brazilian coastal states in three of the country’s five geographic regions:

Northeast

Rio Grande do Norte, Paraíba, Pernambuco, Alagoas, Sergipe, Bahia

Southeast

Espírito Santo, Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo

South

Paraná, Santa Catarina, Rio Grande do Sul

Buildings and organizations

In addition to the many public roads named for Francisco Prestes Maia in the state of São Paulo and throughout Brazil, several buildings and cultural institutions also bear his name, either as an honor to him or because they are located on or near a roadway named “Prestes Maia.”

Prestes Maia building

Demonstration at 911 Prestes Maia Avenue, 2006

One particularly noteworthy building that is commonly referred to as Prestes Maia is a 22-story abandoned factory in downtown São Paulo, located near the Luz train station. The two tower blocks at 911 Avenida Prestes Maia are still registered to the long-defunct former owner, National Cloth Company (Companhia Nacional de Tecidos). In 1994 the building was purchased by a local businessman, Jorge Nacle Hamuche.

Since the 2000s there have been successive occupations by poor and/or homeless individuals connected to squatter’s rights groups such as the Movimento dos Trabalhadores Sem Teto (MTST), a local homeless rights group affiliated with the national Landless Workers' Movement, or Movimento dos Trabalhadores Sem Terra (MST). These occupations have been the subject of international media coverage and documentary filmmakers.

Mayor Prestes Maia Library

The Mayor Prestes Maia Library (Biblioteca Prefeito Prestes Maia) is a multi-story public library located at 822 João Dias Avenue^[33] in the Santo Amaro district of São Paulo. The building itself was designed by Prestes Maia.^[34]

Since December 2012, the library’s collection of more than 53,000 items has been focused on architecture and urbanism, including fiction and non-fiction books, magazines, atlases, braille and multimedia items. The lower three floors contain reading rooms and the reference and circulation areas. The upper floors are made up of offices, meeting and exhibition space, and the archives of the former mayor.^[35]

The special collection, Coleção Prestes Maia, of roughly 12,000 items includes rare books about architecture, urbanism, aesthetics, and history, as well as a collection of personal objects, works of art, and Prestes Maia’s papers. The majority of the material at the Biblioteca Prefeito Prestes Maia circulates regularly or is otherwise available to the public. The library’s collections are indexed in the São Paulo Municipal Library System online catalog.^[35]

Prestes Maia Gallery

Graça by Victor Brecheret at the Galeria Prestes Maia, São Paulo

The Prestes Maia Gallery is subterranean cultural space that connects the Praça da Patriarca to the Valé do Anhangabaú in São Paulo’s historic center.^[12] Completed in 1940, during Prestes Maia’s second term as mayor, it was not named for him until some time later.^[12]

From nearly sixty years the space functioned alternately as an art gallery, municipal offices, and even a homeless shelter. It had badly deteriorated and in late 2000 the administration of the Gallery was taken over by the São Paulo Museum of Art (Museu de Arte de São Paulo — Masp), who planned a major renovation.^[36]

The renovations of Galeria Prestes Maia continued until 2013. The remodeled space contains various exhibition spaces, as well as two tunnels connecting the Matarazzo Building (São Paulo’s city hall) and the old Othon Hotel building (now occupied by the city government).^[37][38]

Bibliography

• Prestes Maia, Francisco (1930). Estudo de um plano de avenidas para a cidade de São Paulo. São Paulo: Melhoramentos de São Paulo. OCLC 23569675
• Prestes Maia, Francisco (1936). O zoneamento urbano. [São Paulo]: Edições da Sociedade Amigos da Cidade.
• Prestes Maia, Francisco (1945). Os melhoramentos de São Paulo. São Paulo: [s.n.] OCLC 5016676
• Prestes Maia, Francisco (1950). O plano regional de Santos. São Paulo: [s.n.]
• Prestes Maia, Francisco (2010). Os melhoramentos de São Paulo (2ª ed.). São Paulo: Imprensa Oficial do Estado de São Paulo. ISBN 9788570605832.
• Bittencourt, Julio (2008). In a window of Prestes Maia 911 building. Stockport, England: Dewi Lewis. ISBN 9781904587675.

External links

• Prestes Maia Library (Portuguese)
• POLI (Escola Politécnica da Universidade de São Paulo) (Portuguese)
• Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais sem Terra (MST) (Portuguese)
• Movimento dos Trabalhadores Sem Teto (MTST) (Portuguese)

References

1. "Maia, Prestes (1896-1965)". Enciclopédia. Itaú Cultural. Retrieved 23 March 2014.
2. Cavalcanti, Pedro; Delion, Luciano (2004). São Paulo, a juventude do centro. São Paulo: Grifo Projetos Históricos e Editoriais. ISBN 9788598953014.
3. "Urbanistas, prefeitos Anhaia Mello e Prestes Maia tinham projetos diferentes para a cidade de São Paulo" (infographic). UOL Notícias (in Portuguese). UOL. 2014-01-21. Retrieved 30 March 2014.
4. "Área de Influência Indireta – AII" (PDF). Prologamento da Av Roberto Marinho e implantação de parque linear - EIA. Prefeitura de São Paulo. 2009. p. 9.1–87. Retrieved 30 March 2014.
5. "5ª Fase: Início da Vargas Era (3/11/1930) à Revolução de 1964: Prestes Maia". História da cidade de São Paulo. Retrieved 30 March 2014. |first1= missing |last1= in Authors list (help)
6. Bicudo, Vicente (Novembro–Dezembro 1983). "São Paulo: Il Cuore della Città". Revista Bimestral de Arte e Cultura – Artescultura. 1 (1). Retrieved 30 March 2014. Check date values in: |date= (help)
7. "Lei nº 12.443, de 27 de agosto de 1997". Retrieved 31 March 2014.
8. Alves, Wellington (2006-05-26). "Prefeitura entrega 2ª Prémio Prestes Maia de Urbanismo". Viva o Centro. Retrieved 31 March 2014.
9. "Bios: Marcos L. Rosa" (PDF). ReAct-Lab 2010 Research Workshop. São Paulo Architecture Experiment. 2010. Retrieved 30 March 2014.
10. "São Paulo, Minhocão under & over; A sectional urbanism of the Minhocão and surroundings". International Workshop with University of Toronto. Vitruvius. 2012-05-27. Retrieved 30 March 2014.
11. Secretaria Executiva de Comunicação (2005-05-05). "Anunciados os vencedores do Prêmio Prestes Maia de Urbanismo" (in Portuguese). Prefeitura de São Paulo. Retrieved 31 March 2014.
12. Arquivo Histórico de São Paulo. "Avenida Prestes Maia". Dicionário de ruas. Retrieved 23 March 2014.
13. (49436033 Av. Prestes Maia—República—São Paulo on OpenStreetMap)
14. (217794620 Av. Francisco Prestes Maia—Amparo on OpenStreetMap)
15. (151807203 Av. Prestes Maia—Campinas on OpenStreetMap)
16. (27014372 Av. Prestes Maia—Santo André on OpenStreetMap)
17. (89328528 Av. Francisco Prestes Maia—São Bernardo do Campo on OpenStreetMap)
18. (87828394 Av. Prestes Maia—Diadema on OpenStreetMap)
19. (199535920 Av. Prestes Maia—Caraguatatuba on OpenStreetMap)
20. (180895270 Av. Prestes Maia—Panorama on OpenStreetMap)
21. (115881271 Av. Prestes Maia—Araçatuba on OpenStreetMap)
22. (196029294 Av. Prestes Maia—Votuporanga on OpenStreetMap)
23. (147215438 Av. Prestes Maia—Osasco on OpenStreetMap)
24. (173070227 Av. Prestes Maia—Carapicuíba on OpenStreetMap)
25. (169514475 Av. Prestes Maia—Guarujá on OpenStreetMap)
26. (188700315 Av. Prestes Maia—São Vicente on OpenStreetMap)
27. Guia da Semana (2011-09-26). "Estabelecimentos: Maresias". UOL. Retrieved 22 March 2014.
28. "Rodovia Prestes Maia BR 101, Alagoinhas - BA". 2010. Retrieved 22 March 2014.
29. Hagah.com.br (2014). "Estabelecimentos em Rodovia Prestes Maia, São Sebastião".
30. Prefeitura do Município de Bertioga. "Localização".
31. São Sebastião Prefeitura (2013). "Um olhar para o futuro" (PDF). Retrieved 22 March 2014.
32. Banco de Leis JurisWay (2001-09-27). "Lei nº 10.292/01 - Rodovia Governador Mário Covas". Retrieved 22 March 2014.
33. (268458671 Avenida João Dias, 822 on OpenStreetMap)
34. Secretaria Municipal de Cultura (2008-09-02). "Biblioteca abre exposição sobre Prestes Maia". Prefeitura de São Paulo. Retrieved 30 March 2014.
35. "Acervos". Portal da Prefeitura. Retrieved 23 March 2014.
36. Amendola, Gilberto (2005-09-28). "Um novo 'point' cultural na Prestes Maia" (PDF). Cidade (in Portuguese). Jornal da Tarde. Retrieved 30 March 2014.
37. Spinelli, Evandro (2011-02-26). "Prefeitura de SP 'anexa' galeria Prestes Maia". Folha de S.Paulo. Retrieved 30 March 2014.
38. Secretaria Municipal do Planejamento (2013-03-04). "Atendimento três em um na Galeria Prestes Maia". Orçamento e Gestão. Prefeitura de São Paulo. Retrieved 30 March 2014.