Butantã's House

The Butantã's House, or Bandeirante's House, is a Bandeirista-style building from the Brazilian colonial period located in Butantã, a neighborhood of the city of São Paulo; representing one of the typical rural dwelling models of São Paulo, it was built around the first half of the 18th-century in an extensive area peripheral to the original urban nucleus. This house portrays an unusual example of building which follows the changes in the city of São Paulo since the first centuries of Portuguese colonization, demonstrating in its architectural design and in its walls the memory of the construction processes of the colonial architecture of São Paulo, in particular of wattle and daub, a technique used in the Bandeirist colonial architecture. It has 350 m divided among 12 rooms and front and back porches. Currently the site on which the house stands constitutes the Monteiro Lobato Square. This space was reserved for the preservation of the property when the neighborhood was developed by the City Company. During the 1950s, for the commemorations of the 4th Centennial of the city of São Paulo, the house was the object of a restoration project by Luís Saia. The house was listed by the Council for the Defense of Historical, Archaeological, Artistic and Tourist Heritage (Conselho de Defesa do Patrimônio Histórico, Arqueológico, Artístico e Turístico - CONDEPHAAT) in 1982.
The Treaty of Tordesillas, concluded in 1494, named a meridian 370 leagues from the archipelago of Cape Verde, giving the land east of this line to Portugal, and the land west to Spain. Inaccuracies regarding the exact exposition of this line resulted in disagreements between the Portuguese and Spanish. While the Portuguese claimed that the Tordesillas line passed through Buenos Aires, the Spanish said it passed through Cananéia. To secure the occupation of the Portuguese portion of the American lands between 1543 and 1536, King John III of Portugal divided Brazil into hereditary captaincies. These did not extend equally, forcing a redistribution of the land. From 1580 on, the year of the unification of the Iberian crowns under Philip II of Spain, the paulistas turned towards Paraguay and the mines of Potosí. At the end of the 16th century, the captaincy of São Vicente became the main point of advance towards the sertão.
Since 1530, the understanding that the Portuguese had of their territory was determined by the natural borders, represented by the great rivers. Being a nation of navigators, and given the large quantity of rivers in Brazilian territory, the penetration of the interior of the continent was managed by the courses of the fluvial waters. The river basins also determined the areas occupied by the indigenous populations; despite not having defined borders, these populations defended their territories fervently through warfare. With the arrival of the colonizers, these enmities were transferred to the alliances made with the Portuguese and the Spanish.
The complex fluvial network formed by the Grande, Pinheiros, Tamanduateí and Tietê Rivers made the Piratininga plateau an ideal forward connection towards the basins of the Paraguay, Paraná and Uruguay Rivers. At the same time, it allowed a fast and efficient circulation between the various points on the plateau. The communication routes between the coast of São Vicente and the Piratininga plateau used the old indigenous paths. This complex network of roads, combining river and land routes, entered the sertão, towards Paraguay and the limits between the domains of Portugal and Spain.
The bandeirista houses were arranged over the territory in order to guarantee the land passages and the fluvial courses. At the same time they defended the Piratininga plateau, they were bases of support for the advances into the sertão. On the Spanish side, the frontier policy used the Jesuit missions to defend the land passages and the fluvial courses. These missions gathered in the territory in order to bar Paulistas advances towards Paraguay.
In the first decades of the 17th century, the Jesuit missions were grouped in three large regions: Itatim (current Mato Grosso do Sul), Guairá (south of the Paranapanema River, current Paraná) and Tape (central region of Rio Grande do Sul). These attacks took place between 1616 and 1648. More than 30 mission villages were destroyed, and captured natives and religious ornaments were brought to São Paulo as war heritage, among which were carvings and images.
Once the Jesuit threat was removed and the defense of the territory was guaranteed, the Paulistas undertook a series of exploratory expeditions, aspiring to discover metals and precious stones in the interior of Brazil. In 1640, after the reestablishment of Portuguese independence, the Paulistas participated in the struggles that expelled the Dutch from the Northeast. The result of the exploratory expeditions was the discovery of Minas Gerais, Goiás and Cuiabá. The bandeirista houses, the bases of these expeditions, became the headquarters of large farms that supplied the mining regions.
On the Spanish side, Jesuit missions were established west of the Uruguay, Paraná and Paraguay Rivers, settling between colonies. The Portuguese project to define the American borders based on the reality of the great rivers was realized, disregarding the ideal imaginary line proposed in Tordesillas. The Tietê River continued to function as a penetration route to the interior, connecting São Paulo to Mato Grosso, by means of monsoons.
Adapted to the function of farm headquarters, the bandeirista houses continued to be used until the introduction of coffee in agriculture, when a new style of architecture was adopted. With all this, the rivers prevailed as natural boundaries.
São Paulo was born under the name of Piratininga. In an attempt to get rid of the crown's orders and find a climate similar to Europe, Jesuits and Portuguese who had no fortune left the coast, crossed the wall of the Serra do Mar and founded the city. For a long time, the population was made up of very poor people and Indigenous who lived near the villages. The way out of such poverty was to search for gold in the sertão and enslave Indigenous people who belonged to tribes considered enemies. This is how the Bandeiras were born, and also the Bandeirantes: name given to the Portuguese settlers who participated in these expeditions.
The Bandeirante's House is one of the memories of this time of the city's formation. It was originally located in lands known as Uvatantan, which in Tupi-Guarani language means "very hard land". Today, it is known as Butantã Neighborhood. They belonged to the Portuguese Afonso Sardinha and his wife, who left the land as an inheritance to the Jesuits. Afterwards, the house passed through several owners, none of them being Bandeirantes. Even so, the house is called like this because in 1954, on the eve of the 400th anniversary celebrations of the city, they decided to give this name to the place as part of the festivities. The idea was to reproduce an authentic Bandeirantes site in the middle of the 20th century. Located near the banks of the Pinheiros River, it is a remnant of the colonial period buildings from São Paulo, known for the remarkable architecture of the time, with walls made of rammed earth and high ceilings. It is still located near the river, rectified in the 20th century. Originally the house was positioned on its bank, because water was the main transportation route, and living by the river was practical.
The Bandeirantes were men from the colonial period, 16th and 17th centuries, who traveled through the backlands in search of precious stones, gold, capturing Indigenous and slaves. Their expeditions were divided in two: the Bandeiras, which were organized by private citizens, and the Entradas, organized by the government. They followed their courses through the rivers of the city, such as the Tietê and Pinheiros Rivers. The best known bandeirantes were Manuel Borba Gato, Fernão Dias Pais Leme and Bartolomeu Buenou da Silva. They came mainly from the towns of São Paulo and São Vicente. They were the first European men to clear Brazil.
With the expulsion of the Jesuits in 1759 and the seizure of the goods, the house was taken to auction and possibly, on this occasion, passed into the hands of third parties, finally becoming the property of the Vieira de Medeiros family. Later, they sold the place to the City Company of Land and Improvement. The City Company, realizing the historical value of that house then known as "Old Butantã's House", donated it to the City Hall of São Paulo, as well as the whole block to which it belongs.
The "Bandeirante's House" is considered one of the most faithful examples of the standard of living of the Bandeirantes and Paulista farmers of this period. This rectangular house of 17.70 x 20.20 m is composed of twelve rooms, each with its own determined use. There are two porches: one in the front, the other in the back. The front one has a 1 m high wall. On the porch, the central door leads to the living room that connects the main rooms. Another door in the center connects the dining room, located next to two rooms, one possibly used for housework, housing a weaving loom, hammock loom, folding machine, spinning wheel, etc. The middle one communicates with the service porch, which gives access to the room where the harnesses and baskets were kept, and which also served as a workshop for repairs. On the other side was the room where the supplies and water for daily consumption were kept. One of the doors leads to the chapel, where masses and novenas were celebrated. The sleeping rooms were all lined with wide, Ocotea catharinensis planks. These boards were removed by people who lived nearby when the house was vacated. The windows of the bedrooms were blocked with wooden bars, which made these rooms excellent "prisons" for the children of the house, when they got into mischief.
Stoves were lately not used in the Paulista rural residences of the 17th century and much of the 18th century. In the "Bandeirante's House", no traces of it have been found either. It can be deduced that the indigenous habit of cooking outdoors, on stones, had been adopted by the Paulistas. In the house, they probably cooked on the veranda at the back of the house, which gave access to the back garden, because of the amount of smoke that came out. The roof of the house is wide and sloped at the ends, to facilitate the fall of water and branches in the rain. With channel tiles, the house becomes vulnerable to cold fronts and winds. Finally, the floor is made of rammed earth, a construction technique widely used at the time.
Bandeirista houses are famous for their walls made of wattle and daub, a technique of building walls using rammed earth. For more than two centuries this was the type of construction that existed in the city of São Paulo. The wattle and daub walls were more resistant than previously thought and were very important in the construction of cities. The walls reaches 5.50 m in height and 50 cm in thickness. The overall structure of the house is quite peculiar: consisting of two rectangular rings of walls, the first one being more central, the boundaries of the two distribution rooms. The other ring constitutes the external limits of the house, interrupted by the two verandas, with an average height of 3.80 m. The other walls served only as connection and bracing of the rings.
Outside, there was a wall of wattle and daub all around the house, surrounding all the land nearby, except the river side. In this wall a wide wooden gate gave access to visitors. These old walls were built to defend the house from the indigenous that were in the vicinity. There are also two gardens next to the house: a larger one, with large trees, which had silk floss trees in front facing the Pinheiro River (old riverbed) with access through a gate; and a smaller one that was to the left of the entrance, for the private use of the residents, with flower cultivation, climbing plants and begonias. There was also a bed of medicinal plants. Near the exit to the Pinheiros riverbed, there is still today a maize milling used since the house was built.
The Bandeirantes' houses originally served only as dwellings, but they gained other meanings as they were incorporated to the municipal public patrimony. The Bandeirante's House was restored in order to become a symbol of a certain memory, because there is no document proving that Bandeirantes or Sertanistas (those who explored the sertão) have lived in it or in the other houses. There is only the glorification of a certain past by those who, from the 50's on, transformed these houses into museums. They are cultural spaces capable of housing different museological practices that involve the action of various social subjects and that, therefore, are heritage of the entire population of the city. Therefore, the site is located in an area whose current zoning establishes adequate norms for the preservation of its ambience.
Heritage Registration Process Number: 22262/82
Heritage Resolution: Resolution No. 02 of January 24, 1983
In March 1954, when Guilherme de Almeida took over the presidency of the Commission for the IV Centennial of the City of São Paulo, wishing to give a more regional stamp to the celebrations by marking them with something connected to São Paulo's historical past, he decided to restore the old house, which, at the time, was abandoned and doomed to disappear. The intention was, once restored, to furnish it with the furniture and objects peculiar to the rural residences of the time, so that it could give an idea of the family atmosphere of a farm from the bandeirantes era. Thanks to the intervention of Mr. Carlos A. Gomes Cardim Filho, the mayor of the city has granted the "Bandeirante's House" to the IV Centennial Commission. He entrusted the general direction of the work to Paulo Camilher Florençano and the various activities related to the work were distributed to technicians of recognized ability. Thus, the architect Luiz Saia, from the National Historic and Artistic Heritage Board, was in charge of guiding the technical part of the restoration of the building, which was done with the utmost discretion, solving, in the smallest details, all the difficult problems inherent in a restoration of this nature. The technician hired was Benedito Pacheco. The garden services around the building were ordered by Artur Etzel, director of the City Hall Parks Department.
In more than 450 years, a lot has changed in São Paulo. It is almost impossible to recognize in today's landscape how the city used to be. Buildings such as the Bandeirante's House, make it is easier to understand the continuous movement of the city. Since a few years ago, the house has also been dedicated to different moments of São Paulo's history through events, shows and exhibitions. The house then became a museum that intends to revive the Bandeirista cycle.