Abstract

CASTRO, Cesar Augusto; FURTADO, Luciana Nathalia Morais  and  CASTELLANOS, Samuel Luis Velázquez. Won’t the Brazilian Athens deserve a "Wedding Cake"? A building for the Maranhão Public Library. Cad. Hist. Educ. [online]. 2022, vol.21, e124.  Epub Sep 13, 2022. ISSN 1982-7806.  https://doi.org/10.14393/che-v21-2022-124.

In this article we discuss the history of the Maranhão Public Library, with an emphasis on demands for construction of a permanent building to house its collections and serve its readers. First, we contextualize the library in the Imperial Period; next, we consider the debates that arose in the Republic; and then, we address the construction of a permanent building. To do so, we use several documental sources, highlighting reports of Library directors analyzed from the perspective of Cultural History. We conclude that the construction of the building for the institution constituted a movement generated for that purpose, which ends in the 1950s when the building was constructed and handed over to the society of Maranhão. The library has occupied the building in São Luís since then.

Keywords : Library history; Maranhão Library; Library building.

        · abstract in Portuguese | Spanish     · text in English | Portuguese     · English ( pdf ) | Portuguese ( pdf )