Between the ages of zero and twenty-two, I lived in Rua Santo Inácio, number 455. Throughout my childhood, there was no building. Only houses, some bigger, some smaller. Some were almost palaces; others, like my family’s, were middle-class. Some had some architectural charm, others were just another house in the Moinhos de Vento neighborhood. There were no shops, no bars, no restaurants. The headquarters of MPM Propaganda was apparently the only commercial address. There was also the silk from the TFP (Tradition, Family, and Property), from which sometimes strangers – and scary – departed the street, in the direction of the Marquis of Herval. And there was the German Consulate, right in front of my house, where we could rent 16mm films.

To tell the truth, there was, yes, a building on St. Ignatius Street from my childhood, which was called (and, mistakenly, still called) Rizzo Building. But it was only three stories high, so it did not even stand much higher than the neighboring houses. Around the end of the 70’s, the first real building was built, about ten floors, with bricks in sight, on the corner of Luciana de Abreu. There were many trees on the ground, and they were reasonably preserved, so the street did not seem to have changed much. I still cycled on the sidewalk, since the cobblestones in the street were quite irregular. He could go to Father Chagas, buy warm bread, or stretch out to the Water Box to look for stones of strange colors and shapes. The most violent events in my memory are the cinnamon balls (balls) that I waged with my friends.

My father, who built our house in the early 1950s, died in 1982, and the gray sojourn – already too large for my mother, who practically lived alone – was sold a few years later, along with our neighbor’s house, Mrs. Julieta, to give way to a building. The same fate had the spectacular house of dr. Gert and Mrs. Zilda, great friends of more parents and our neighbors for decades. The same fate had practically all the other houses of the Saint Ignatius. The places of my childhood – the Schneiders ‘house, the Benincas’ house, the house where the Swiss Chalet was, the German Consulate – were overthrown, replaced by buildings.

When I pass by, it seems that I am, at the same time, in the place of my childhood and in a place that I do not know completely. Not to mention that there is something left, there is the beautiful yellow house on the corner of Luciana de Abreu, on the historical patrimony, where my maternal grandfather, Carlos Barth, raised his family. My mother, now almost 94, can still point to the little window in the attic that lit her dollhouse. I’m not so lucky. The building number 455, where I have never entered, has no recollection of the football matches in the courtyard with my brothers and colleagues from Anchieta, the sleepy walks after Sunday’s family lunch, walks with Boris, the restless boxer who replaced our noble (and unkempt) Irish setter Lord. Anyway, there is no more St. Ignatius Street where I lived.

For these sentimental and nostalgic reasons (and many others, of a rational nature, perhaps I write another article to enumerate them) I declare my unrestricted support for the movement that fights for the preservation of the houses of the street of Luciana de Abreu that, it seems, will be replaced by one more building. Let’s not let that happen in St. Ignatius, where time and space are hopelessly lost in the name of a modernity that puts predictable and bland forms instead of houses that have heart, soul and beauty. I do not know who is right legally speaking, but I have no doubt that, morally and culturally speaking, it would be a crime against our city to follow the financial logic and continue to ravage our heritage, our memories and our childhoods.