From the fifth decade of the twentieth century
Here are two Art Deco apartment blocks found in the older part of the city of São Paulo, Brazil. First, the pink one features continuous curving balconies and some nice fenestration to the right with coloured glass and porthole windows. The white building below is in Japantown in the Liberdade district, situated on Rua Galvão Bueno. It has curvy corners and balconies, and steps in gradually at the top.
There are some apartment blocks on the Avenida António Augusto de Aguiar which have excellent Art Deco reliefs over their entrances. These are in the Saldanha district of Lisbon and belong to a group which probably all had the same team of architects.
The first is a building located at Avenida António Augusto de Aguiar 15, which features a corner tower that has a large, carved, stone relief of a family group above the entrance at its base. The mother and father are portrayed giving support on either side of the child.
Nearby at Avenida António Augusto de Aguiar #9 and #7 are two other related buildings with excellent street level carved, stone reliefs. The one at number #9 features a courting couple of birds, and at #7 a reclining woman lies wreathed with draperies. A date and the sculptor’s name is just visible on the latter at bottom left: 1942, Leopoldo.
Located at Paseo de la Alameda 15 at the corner of Calle de Don Armando Palacio Valdés, in central Valencia, this curved corner building is a mixture of commercial and residential. The Alameda Beers restaurant occupies the ground floor.
Sitting just opposite Lisbon’s expansive Parque Eduardo VII (Edward VII Park, named in honour of the UK monarch who visited Portugal in 1903), the building at Avenida Sidonio Pais 18 is one of a cluster of contiguous structures which probably all had the same team of architects. These are most likely buildings from the 1940s and nearly all of them have at least a sculpture over the main entrance.
Avenida Sidonio Pais 18 is a modern building with a Classical touch not only in the window pediments on the exterior but also in its ambitious sculpture programme. On either side of the front entrance are vertical groups of four carved, stone reliefs. These depict in fine Art Deco style eight of the nine Muses, those Classical personifications of the arts and knowledge including Clio, the Muse of history and Euterpe, the Muse of flutes and lyric poetry.
Up in the north of Portugal you can find the beautiful city of Porto. Here is an apartment block in the city located at Rua de Sá da Bandeira 630. Below it at street level are shops and the Garagem de Sá da Bandeira, a car park, whose sign is on the far right. The building is well proportioned, if a little boxy. The only curved elements are the corbels at the base of the two continuous vertical windows used for the stairwells.
The daily newspaper Diario de Noticias has been published in Lisbon since 1864. This mid-twentieth century building, designed by the architect Porfirio Pardal Monteiro, won the Portuguese ‘Premio Valmor’ architectural prize in 1940. Located on the prestigious Avenida da Liberdade in the Rossio district, it united in one location all of the various functions of the newspaper, from editorial all the way to subscriptions, printing and distribution. It was listed as a National Monument in 1986. Note the embedded black tower on the left, complete with a lantern at the top, together suggesting a lighthouse. Recently it has been converted into luxury apartments.
Global Art Deco 