Classification: Documented

The Martinelli Building: a skyscraper between fear and memory

The Martinelli rose amid fears that it would collapse and later acquired a haunted reputation. Between those legends lie a mansion on its roof, a Black cultural movement on the 16th floor, and the lives of residents displaced during restoration.

São Paulo, São Paulo, Brasil · See stories from this place and nearby

A tower that alarmed the city

A building so tall that some residents feared walking beside it: this was one response to Giuseppe Martinelli's project in downtown São Paulo. Construction began in 1924 on the plot between Rua São Bento, Rua Líbero Badaró, and Avenida São João. Architect William Fillinger's design kept growing; part of the building opened in 1929, and it was completed in 1934 at roughly 105 metres and 30 floors. It was not the city's first tall building (Sampaio Moreira already stood nearby), but it gave São Paulo's vertical growth a new scale.

Engineering meets public doubt

Fear of collapse reached newspapers and officials. To answer the doubts, Martinelli had a mansion built on top and moved in with his family. Living above the city became a public display of confidence in the structure: if it fell, its creator would be inside. It was no engineering test, but it reveals how engineering, publicity, and popular imagination competed over the building from the beginning.

A city inside the building

Inside, there was no single city. The Líbero Badaró entrance led to residences, Rua São Bento served businesses, and Avenida São João led to the Hotel São Bento and the Verde and Mourisco salons. The Cine Rosário opened there in 1929. Photographs assembled by Brasiliana Fotográfica show the tower within the city growing around it. Claude Lévi-Strauss photographed it in the 1930s and saw it as a symbol of São Paulo's ambition to become a vertical metropolis.

Changes of ownership

The building's ownership changed dramatically. After a sale linked to the economic turmoil that followed 1929, it passed to an Italian institution. During the Second World War, the Brazilian government confiscated Italian assets; the building was auctioned and eventually divided among 103 owners. Fragmented ownership and changes downtown help explain its difficult management and later deterioration. They do not explain everything that happened there, or justify blaming lower-income residents for its problems.

A lesser-known story between the floors

A lesser-known story unfolded among floors now remembered for crime and ghosts. Before July 1956, the Associação Cultural do Negro, or Black Cultural Association, moved into the 16th floor. The address let its members meet at night after work. Research on the association documents debates, public events, and publications asserting Black people's role in Brazilian history. Clube 220 occupied the 17th floor. Members initially hesitated because of the building's reputation; nonetheless, they made it a place of encounter and intellectual work. Remembering them restores people and voices to a building often described only through its decline.

Decay, violence and memory

Physical decay and episodes of violence were real. Broken elevators, failing installations, precarious housing, and deaths appear in records and reporting from the period. While making a documentary about the building in 1975, filmmaker Ugo Giorgetti found a family living inside a broken elevator car, according to a 1995 Folha report. His film Rua São Bento, 405, completed in 1976, followed the transition from the building's former life to public intervention and the removal of residents. That scene speaks to a housing and maintenance crisis; it was not invented as a horror story.

Where the ghost stories enter

It was in this setting that supernatural tales took hold. In a 1998 report, a worker said she had heard a typewriter in a dark, empty room on the 25th floor. Other accounts describe elevators moving without passengers. These are testimonies and stories about the Martinelli, not evidence of paranormal activity. Nor can every unexplained noise be linked to victims of crimes without a record supporting that connection. Its haunted reputation mixes subjective experiences with verifiable events, but one layer does not prove the other.

Restoration and survival

In 1975, city authorities expropriated part of the property and began restoration; the building reopened in 1979. The work saved an architectural landmark and made room for public offices and other uses, while Giorgetti's documentary preserved the memory of residents being removed. Heritage protections followed. The building's survival is therefore more than the story of a repaired façade: it raises questions about who is allowed to occupy, remember, and narrate the city centre.

The Martinelli still stands within the same triangle of streets. Time disproved the original fear of collapse; the ghost stories remain without verifiable proof. Between the two are documents, photographs, a film, and academic research leading to another question: which lives does a city choose to preserve within its monuments, and which does it leave outside the frame?

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