Hotel Majestic

The Hotel Majestic is a Brazilian historical building and a cultural center of the city of Porto Alegre, now named Casa de Cultura Mario Quintana.

The Hotel Majestic had its heyday in the 1930s, 1940 and 1950. During this period it hostess big name guests from politics, as former Presidents Getúlio Vargas and Jango Goulart, and from the art world, as Vicente Celestino, Virginia Lane and Francisco alves. The house was named after the name of a grate Brazilian poet, Mario Quintana, born in Rio Grande do Sul city of Alegrete but took Porto Alegre as the city heart. The writer lived in the hotel between 1968 and 1982, in apartment 217.

The building, German-Brazilian project architect Theodor Wiederspahn ( the same that designed the Cassino, another video published here), was the first major building in Porto Alegre which used reinforced concrete. Designed to occupy both sides of Travessa Araújo Ribeiro, has two blocks connected by large walkways informed by arcades and containing terraces, balconies and columns. The luxury hotel project, built by businessman Horacio de Carvalho, was considered very daring at the time, because the idea of ​​suspended walkways on the public highway was unheard.
Work began in 1916 and, in 1918, has completed the first part of the building. In 1926 it was designed the eastern part. At the end of the work, in 1933, the Majestic had seven floors in the east wing and five in the western part. The design of the building skillfully mixing historical styles, giving an impression of grandeur.