History
The station was built in the late 19th century with the purpose of being the headquarters of the newly-founded São Paulo Railway. In the first decades of the 20th century, it was the main entrance to the city, a fact that gave it a major economic relevance, because the majority of the coffee from Santos was delivered in the station, along with the imported supplies.
The current building was finished in 1901. The materials for its construction were brought from UK. The station was designed and produced by Walter Macfarlane & Co. Saracen Foundry Glasgow. The station was assembled in Glasgow, then disassembled and sent to São Paulo where it was reassembled. The building was designed by the English architect Henry Driver.
In the 1940s, the station caught fire and during the rebuilding process, a new floor was added to the building. Since then, the rail transport in Brazil started to decline, the same happened with the Luz neighbourhood. Both factors led to the degradation of the station. However, in the 1990s, the station was repaired.
Read more about this topic: Luz Station
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Tell me of the height of the mountains of the moon, or of the diameter of space, and I may believe you, but of the secret history of the Almighty, and I shall pronounce thee mad.”
—Henry David Thoreau (18171862)
“Racism is an ism to which everyone in the world today is exposed; for or against, we must take sides. And the history of the future will differ according to the decision which we make.”
—Ruth Benedict (18871948)
“No one is ahead of his time, it is only that the particular variety of creating his time is the one that his contemporaries who are also creating their own time refuse to accept.... For a very long time everybody refuses and then almost without a pause almost everybody accepts. In the history of the refused in the arts and literature the rapidity of the change is always startling.”
—Gertrude Stein (18741946)