Office - For Rent/Lease - São Paulo , São Paulo

Community Description

Anyone who walks through Ipiranga, as I do on a regular basis, has certainly passed through Rua Bom Pastor. A very long road full of interesting shops, it is an important reference in the region. In today's text I will bring a curiosity that I recently discovered, doing some research here for the site. Surely you have stopped to think “where did the name Bom Pastor come from”? When used in the São Paulo street dictionary, the justification that appears is the following: “This name recalls the existence of an asylum for minors with that name in the area”. That's just part of the story, so to speak.

Browsing the “São Paulo Minha Cidade” website, it is possible to find a story that, in fact, is almost an urban legend of SP. It goes more or less like this: when the neighborhood was still partially inhabited, the streets were not yet laid out and the paths were full of holes, a helpless and weak boy fell into a depression in the ground and ended up lying on the foliage as he walked. When he was barely able to open his eyes, the figure of Jesus Christ appeared, who lifted him up and told him that he was a Shepherd of Souls and, in the name of the Father, took care of children. I would ask for him, so that the men could build an asylum nearby, for abandoned children.

The “true” story, so to speak, was extremely well dissected in a document presented at the XXII State History Meeting of ANPUH-SP Santos, in 2014. The historical explanation lies in the construction, in fact, of an institution for orphan girls , poor and of bad conduct. The Bom Pastor Asylum, as it was called, began construction in 1893, in Ipiranga. The land of this entity was purchased by the Portuguese priest José Antonio de Almeida e Silva, for two contos and five hundred thousand reis.

Work on the building began on May 6, 1893, with the illustrious presence of the institution's president, counselor Joaquim Pedro Villaça and the entire board of directors. On July 28, 1893, Asilo do Bom Pastor became the first welfare institution in the Ipiranga neighborhood, which, at the time, was part of the parish of Sé. The land was fifty-three and a half meters in height and ninety-four meters deep, where the Tamanduateí River passed.