Rio de Janeiro that the current generation does not know. The tragic end of one of the greatest jewels of carioca architecture.

The 1906 Rio de Janeiro was a construction site, taken over by the urban reforms of Governor Pereira Passos (1902-1906). The city was expanding towards the south, and the once narrow streets became wide enough to accommodate car traffic. Beira-Mar Avenue, a boulevard that connects the city center to the Botafogo neighborhood by the waterfront, was one of the last works inaugurated by the governor. To crown this great development, at the end of avenue, in Botafogo, began the construction of one of the most beautiful buildings of the capital in the early twentieth century: the Moorish pavilion.

Opened in 1907, the pavilion was designed by architect Alfredo Burnier, head of the Architecture Section of the General Directorate of Works and Roads, to serve as a café and restaurant, a landing after long walks along Beira-Mar Avenue and its surroundings. It had three large terraces, where the café was, a large indoor area for the restaurant, and a small separate building, which had a puppet theater for the children.

The building had four towers and five golden domes, of Arabic inspiration; Its exterior was lined with ceramics and tiles imported from Spain. The architectural style to which he belonged, the neo-Moorish, typical of the time.

Considered for many years to be a fashionable place, the Moorish pavilion began to decay in the 1920's. With the café and restaurant closed, the building would house between 1934 and 1937 a public children's library run by Cecilia Meireles, which more It was later closed by the federal government on the grounds that children were being indoctrinated into adhering to the communist ideal supposedly found in one of Tom Sawyer's books.

In 1952, the pavilion was finally demolished to make way for the Pasmado tunnel. After years of empty land, an agreement with the club in the 1990s would allow the construction of the Moorish Business Center, a large commercial building and controversial aesthetics, whose work ended in 1998.