Mangabeiras

History

Mangabeiras is a through-lot building: two parallel streets run a few dozen metres apart, and the building, alone in the middle of the block, runs from one to the other. It’s an arrangement that has practically disappeared from the city — it requires an entire deep lot with no neighbour at the rear, something Higienópolis had when the neighbourhood was still being subdivided and no longer has. The result is a building with two frontages and a single address: Engenheiro Edgar Egídio de Sousa, 170, is the master address; the Rua das Mangabeiras façade is secondary, and that is where the name came from. The authorship of the project and the name of the builder are not documented in public sources and, for that reason, are not attributed here.

• Concept: a single building on a through lot — the block crossed end to end, with no neighbour on either side and none at the rear.
• Trivia: the building is called Mangabeiras because of the street at the rear, not the street at the front door — which is why the same unit appears on the market sometimes listed on Engenheiro Edgar Egídio de Sousa, sometimes on Rua das Mangabeiras. The building also sits on a neighbourhood boundary: the postal service registers the postcode under Santa Cecíliai, property registries oscillate between Pacaembui and Sumaré, and the market sells it as Higienópolisi — the four names describe the same block.

Architecture and aesthetics

The site layout is the design. With no construction attached on either side and a double frontage, the building gains what almost no other building in the neighbourhood has: genuine cross-ventilation and free façades on both orientations, with open views to both sides of the block instead of onto the neighbour’s wall. The floor plans reflect that breathing room — units of almost three hundred square metres with three bedrooms, a full service area and a wide garage, at a floor-area-per-bedroom ratio that the high-end developments of later years left behind. At the top, penthouses reaching over five hundred square metres and eight parking spaces.

Aesthetics and scarcity

Technical specifications

• Towers and units: 1 tower, built on a through lot between Rua Engenheiro Edgar Egídio de Sousa and Rua das Mangabeiras.
• Floor areas: 269 to 300 m² in the standard floor plans, with 3 bedrooms; listings in circulation record penthouses of 466 m² and 550 m².
• Parking spaces: 4 in the standard floor plan; 6 to 8 in the penthouses.
• Structural differentials: through lot with two frontages and no attached construction, free façades on both orientations of the block.
• Registry and parameters: 1 tower · 3 bedrooms in the standard unit · 3 to 5 bathrooms · 4 to 8 parking spaces · private areas from 269 m² to 550 m² · master address Rua Engenheiro Edgar Egídio de Sousa, 170; secondary façade on Rua das Mangabeiras.

Location and surroundings

Points of interest · distances in metres

Higienópolis: the address

Two names for the same address

The lot sits on the border between Higienópolis and Santa Cecília, and both names are legitimate. The postcode registers Santa Cecília; the high-end market treats the address as Higienópolis. This page adopts the name in common use and keeps the other on file for anyone searching by it.

Higienópolisi is the neighbourhood where São Paulo’s elite lived first and never left — historic townhouses, streets shaded in dense tree cover, and a cultural life that doesn’t depend on a shopping mall. This stretch, bordering Pacaembui and Santa Cecíliai, is the most residential of the three: short streets, local traffic and very little passing commerce. Around it, the traditional schools, the leading hospitals and Avenida Angélica; a few minutes away, Avenida Paulistai and the old city centre. It’s a neighbourhood for those who chose to be close to everything without living on an avenue.