Várzea do Carmo
former area in São Paulo, Brazil
Várzea do Carmo was the designation of one of the central areas of the city of São Paulo, adjacent to the Carmel Convent and frequently affected by the floods of the Tamanduateí River, formerly known as Piratininga. In 1821, Major Pedro Arbues Moreira submitted to the government a proposal to drain the Várzea do Carmo by opening a 40-meter-wide canal; the work was not carried out as it was too expensive. Many improvements were made to the site during the presidencies of Vicente Pires da Mota and João Teodoro Xavier, including the change in the course of the Tamanduateí River.
The complete sanitation and recovery of Várzea do Carmo was a slow process. After the canalization of the river, which was completed in the 1920s, the name was disused and today the area is equivalent to Dom Pedro II Park. On April 14, 1895, at Várzea do Carmo, a soccer match was played between Englishmen and Anglo-Brazilians, formed by employees of the Gas Company and the São Paulo Railway. The match, considered to be the first soccer event in the country, ended in a 4–2 victory for the São Paulo Railway.
History
The area was called Várzea do Carmo because it was flooded by the Tamanduateí and Carmo rivers. The recurrent flooding became a problem for the population, as it was responsible for spreading diseases due to the unhealthy conditions. In 1810, in order to solve the issue, a ditch was built in the center of Várzea do Carmo.
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This entry incorporates text from “Várzea do Carmo” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.