Francisco Prestes Maia

Francisco Prestes Maia (19 March 1896 – 26 April 1965) was a Brazilian architect, civil engineer, urban planner, and professor, who served three terms as mayor of the city of São Paulo.

He is the Founder of the 48th chair of the Brazilian Academy of Fine Arts.

Biography

Francisco Prestes Maia was born to Manuel Azevedo Maia and Carolina Prestes on March 19, 1896, in Amparo, São Paulo, a small town 120 km north of the capital city.

In 1917, Prestes Maia completed his engineering and architecture degree at the POLI, Polytechnic School of São Paulo (Portuguese: Escola Politécnica da Universidade de São Paulo). In 1918, he set up a real estate office and also began working for the São Paulo state government.

From 1924 to 1927, Prestes Maia taught architectural drawing courses part-time at his alma mater, POLI. He was promoted to full professor in 1927 and taught for another ten years. In 1937, he left the university in order to be able to continue working for the city.

On August 27, 1997, the city of São Paulo passed a law (Lei nº 12.443) creating the Prestes Maia Urbanism Award (Prêmio Prestes Maia de Urbanismo) to be awarded every four years with the idea of proposing initiatives in urban planning and engineering. The Prestes Maia Award has only been given twice, in 1998 and in 2006.

Toponyms

Roadways

Avenida Prestes Maia

Francisco Prestes Maia has many streets named for him throughout his home state of São Paulo. The largest of these is Avenida Prestes Maia, an arterial expressway in downtown São Paulo that is part of the North-South Corredor (Corredor Norte-Sul).

Many municipalities in Greater São Paulo — as well as some in the so-called interior of the state — have at least one street named, Avenida Prestes Maia or some derivation thereof, e.g., Avenida Francisco Prestes Maia, Avenida Doutor Francisco Prestes Maia, etc.:

Rodovia Prestes Maia (BR-101)

Brazil's longest highway, BR-101, is also still popularly known as Rodovia Prestes Maia for much of its 4,800 km (3,000 mi), despite having been officially renamed more than a decade ago to honor another politician from São Paulo, Mário Covas.

Rodovia Governador Mário Covas, as BR-101 has officially been known since 2001, in the Santo Amaro district of São Paulo. The building itself was designed by Prestes Maia.

Since December 2012, the library's collection of more than 53,000 items has been focused on architecture and urbanism, including fiction and non-fiction books, magazines, atlases, braille and multimedia items. The lower three floors contain reading rooms and the reference and circulation areas. The upper floors are made up of offices, meeting and exhibition space, and the archives of the former mayor.

The special collection, Coleção Prestes Maia, of roughly 12,000 items includes rare books about architecture, urbanism, aesthetics, and history, as well as a collection of personal objects, works of art, and Prestes Maia's papers. The majority of the material at the Biblioteca Prefeito Prestes Maia circulates regularly or is otherwise available to the public. The library's collections are indexed in the São Paulo Municipal Library System online catalog.

The renovations of Galeria Prestes Maia continued until 2013. The remodeled space contains various exhibition spaces, as well as two tunnels connecting the Matarazzo Building (São Paulo's city hall) and the old Othon Hotel building (now occupied by the city government).