page_title: Aclimação
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Aclimação / History
caption_attribution_description: Parque da Aclimação em São Paulo.
context_page_description: Aclimação is a prosperous neighborhood in the central region of the city of São Paulo, Brazil. It is located in the municipal district of Liberdade, in the Sé Subprefecture.
context_section_description: Despite its central location, Aclimação is one of the newer neighborhoods in downtown São Paulo, developed settled only in the 20th century. The neighborhood has grown up on a winding hilly triangular-shaped area of land known as the Sítio Tapanhoin, bounded on its three sides by the Caminho do Mar highway to the port of Santos and the Lavapés and Cambuci rivers.
  The land was purchased in 1892 by Carlos Botelho, a doctor born in Piracicaba and trained in Paris, who was anxious to pursue an ambition he had developed during his time in France to create a Brazilian equivalent of the "Jardin d’Acclimatation" in Paris, a place used for the acclimation of exotic species, with a research center for animal reproduction and hybridization and including a zoo among its various attractions. Inspired by the French model, he named his property the Jardim da Aclimação, from which both the Parque da Aclimação park and the neighborhood as a whole take their names.
  For 30 years, up until the 1920s, the Garden, which was much larger than it is today, was one of the city's most popular attractions. Botelho developed it into a place of recreation and research. It was used as a quarantine station for cattle imported from the Netherlands. Visitors to the Garden's "creamery" were able to drink milk fresh from the cow or purchase dairy produce like cream and cheese. Before moving to Brooklin Novo, the Brazilian Equestrian Society (Sociedade Hípica Paulista) had its headquarters in the Garden, where there was also a livestock improvement station and a scientific research laboratory.
  For recreation, there was the wood, a canoeing lake created by damming the streams running through the area, the city's first zoo, complete with bears, lions, monkeys, elephants, jaguars and other animals, as well as a dance hall, a skating rink, fairground stalls, an aquarium, and an amusement park. Visitors paid 300 reais to enter. As there were few people living nearby the Jardim da Aclimação could only be reached by public transport on Sundays and public holidays when the No. 28 tram ran to the Gardens from the Sé.
  Adjoining the Garden were extensive private grounds belonging to the Botelho family. During the 1930s, Botelho's children, to whom he had transferred ownership of the property after deciding to follow a career in politics a few years earlier, began to build on the land. In 1938, hearing that they were having difficulty keeping up with the cost of maintaining the Jardim da Aclimação and planning to build on it, the Mayor of São Paulo, Prestes Maia, offered to purchase the property from them.
  On 16 January 1939, Botelho's heirs, Antônio Carlos de Arruda Botelho, Constança Botelho de Macedo Costa, and Carlos José Botelho Júnior, formalized the sale of an area of 182 thousand square meters to the Prefecture of São Paulo, for the sum of 2,850 million reais. Paradoxically, rather than signaling the rebirth of the Jardim da Aclimação, the purchase spelled out the definitive end for most of its attractions and the beginning of a long period of alternating neglect and revival for the green open space.
caption: Parque da Aclimação is one of the most well-known parks in São Paulo
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