O The Architectural Heritage of the Museum of the Port of Manaus

Abstract

The Museum do Porto is located at Rua Vivaldo Lima nº 61, and is inserted in the Architectural Longshore Set of Manaus. The construction of the building where the museum is located is from the year 1905, and it was built by the “Manaus Harbour Limited”, a company established in 1900 in order to explore the port commercially. The building makes part of a complex recognized by the Institute of the Historical and Artistic Inheritance (Iphan), Process Number: 1192-T-86 Livro de Belas Artes Inscrição: 589 do Livro Arqueológico, Etnográfico e Paisagístico. Inscrição: 100, em 14-10-1987. The museum is controlled by the Administração do Porto Privatizado de Manaus. It has 742m² of built area, and has been installed in 1981 to keep, extra-officially, about 300 pieces, boarding historical, technological and commercial aspects about the longshore activities in the region, from the beginning of 20th century till the decade of 1950. This material is exposed in eight different ambients: Machine house, rooms 1, 2, 3, 4, the hall, mezzanine and external area, where the “non perishable” pieces such as heavy objects, anchors, hills, reels and lathes. The front of this construction presents some characteristic elements that have an unified quality with the whole set, that means, the use of apparent bricks (English appliance) and the brick revetment treated in bossage, besides a tendency of full, they give a heavy appearance and a mediaeval aspect to the building. The building still possesses a triangular fronton on a cornice and the use of glasses and colossal endorsed pilasters. At the present days, the Museum do Porto is abandoned, without it’s proper maintenance, it’s closed for ten years, with all the heap inside the building, and the structure made of iron is currently in many risks. It is, indeedm a very important historical and architectural inheritance, to be studied, registred and preserved.