The South American Tour

by Annie S. Peck

Opposite the Fine Arts Museum is the Municipal Theater, a splendid edifice, facing a small triangular park, with one side on the Avenida.

The theater, like the Colon in Buenos Aires, is fitted up with every modern improvement, mechanical and electrical devices above and below the stage, which seems almost as large as the auditorium, with rows upon rows of floor drops to give the depth desired. A power plant, an air filtering and cooling plant, and what is called the most beautiful restaurant in South America, minister to the comfort of the audience. The restaurant of Assyrian style in details follows Babylonian originals in the Louvre of Paris. The leather-covered armchairs in the auditorium, of unusual width and well spaced, are especially comfortable. The President, of course, is provided with an elegant box, communicating with private salon and dining-room on the floor below. Modelled after the Paris Opera House, though a trifle smaller, it is richly decorated. Designed and built by Dr. Francisco Oliveira Passos, son of the great Mayor Passos, during whose administration the grand transformation of the city was largely effected, the theater was inaugurated in July, 1909, with Rejane and an all star French company. It is now leased to an impresario who must produce each year a number of standard plays, some in Portuguese translation, and some plays by native dramatists, further encouraging national art by conducting a dramatic school. Visitors may be admitted at the rear entrance between ten and four on working days.

At the very end of the Avenue, not far from the Theater and close to the sea, with open space on every side, stands the Monroe Palace, which at the St. Louis Exposition served as the Brazilian headquarters, and here, in 1906, as the meeting place for the second Pan American Congress. It is of a rather florid type of architecture, the most ornate of the buildings on the Avenue.

The Monroe Palace has one entrance on the Avenida and one on the opposite side towards the Passeio Publico. This most ancient of the public gardens of Rio, founded in 1783, contains vegetation from this epoch, hence 130 years old. It has the usual beauties of tropical parks, trees, shrubbery, flower beds, and vines, also several statues, and a pretty building, entrance 1 milreis, housing a collection of native fishes. This Marine Aquarium, installed in 1904, has 20 sections with 35 different species; among these, flying fish, feather fish, turtles, moon fish, crabs, sea-horses, varieties of lobsters, and of marine plants. A pavilion, affording opportunity for rest and the purchase of refreshments, supplies also music and moving pictures. The garden, which is much frequented, was designed by a native artist, Valentina da Fonseca e Silva, more familiarly known as mestre Valentim. The artistic decoration includes two statues, Apollo and Mercury, the arms of Luiz de Vasconcellos, then Viceroy, the bust in the fount of the jacarés, and two granite pyramids inscribed 1783, A’ saudade do Rio e Ao Amor do Publico.

Busts of the poets, Gonçalves Dias, and Castro Alves, and of the journalist, Ferreira de Aranjo, founder of the Gazeta de Noticias, have been placed in the garden. At the main entrance is a gilded bronze medallion of Queen Maria and her consort, Dom Pedro III.

Among the important streets running from the Praça 15th of November across the Avenida, a little north of the Hotel Avenida, are the Assembléa leading to the Praça da Carioca, a short distance from the Avenue, and the rua 7th of September leading to the Praça Tirandentes farther west. The Garden contains an admirable statue, by the French sculptor Rochel, of Dom Pedro I, founder of the empire. Continuing in the same direction, one will reach the large and beautiful Parque da Republica, in a Praça or Square of the same name, of unusual size for a park near the heart of the business section. Here are woods, lakes, and streams with aquatic birds, black and white swans, islands and rustic bridges, a grotto with a pretty cascade, 66,000 varieties of plants, many birds and animals, and some statuary.

All of the parks are characterized by luxuriant tropical verdure.

On the Praça, south of the Park, is an immense building, the Firemen’s Barracks.

To the northwest, facing a paved square, is the great Station of the Central Railway, with tracks running into three different states and to forty or more cities, including São Paulo. Its revenue is more than $10,000,000 a year. On another side of the Praça facing the Park is the Senate House, and the Mint with an imposing façade and some fine ornamentation in bronze. Other buildings on the sides of the Praça are the Ministry of War, the Barracks, the Normal School, the Foreign Office, the Law and the Medical Schools, and the National School of Music.

From the northwest corner of the Park two parallel streets run westward, the Visconde de Itauna and Senador Eusebio, to the Square Onze de Junho, whence they continue at the side of the Canal do Mangue, forming a grand boulevard with two rows of royal palms on each side. This double and channeled avenue has one sharp bend, turning in the direction of the new docks, where the canal empties into the harbor. It is a mile and a half in length, has two tracks for electric cars, paved ways for wagons, and broad asphalt for automobiles, to which the central stream of water with its massive stone embankments and the superb rows of palms add an unusual beauty.