Headquarters of the Minas Tennis Club I

(Former Minas Gerais Sports Square)

The headquarters building of the Minas Tênis Clube is located at Bahia Street, 22994, at the corner of Antônio de Albuquerque Street, in a block also delimited by streets Antonio Aleixo and Espírito Santo, totaling an area of 31,000 m².

In the original urban plan of the capital, this land was reserved to be the city’s zoo, but the difficulties of maintaining a zoo in a noble, residential neighborhood and next to the governor’s palace did not encourage its creation.

In the government of the mayor Otacílio Negrão de Lima, a nobler destiny was assigned to the area, which by then had already become unhealthy. The construction of sports, leisure and recreation equipment was chosen. This initiative of the public power was later shared by the private initiative, being the area rented by the newly created Minas Tênis Clube. In 1938, by decree of the intervener of the state, Benedito Valadares, the “Praça de Esporte Minas Gerais” was created there.

In the new space of the city, contingents of an ascendant elite sought to affirm socially the economic success already achieved and to develop rational physical culture, starting at childhood.

The headquarters building was inaugurated in 1940, designed by architects Rafaello Berti and Luiz Signorelli, in Art Déco, a style that already had some examples here and that would have others, such as the buildings of the Telephone Museum, Santo Agostinho School, Belo Horizonte City Hall and the Archiepiscopal Palace.

This style privileges the geometric and rectilinear lines, with scattered and sober ornaments in low relief and curved volumes.

Currently, the headquarters building of the Minas Tênis Clube I have four floors, a car entrance that leaves the passenger at the door, protected by a slab, which forms a terrace on the second floor. From this second floor in this central volume, there are two curvilinear lateral volumes with glass bricks. The first and second floors are two large event halls.

The first one can be accessed through the main hall, and it is where a traditional restaurant is located, with elaborate wooden decoration, which opens onto a balcony with ample views of sports equipment, gardens and part of the neighborhood of Lourdes. The second floor, a large hall, is used for parties and balls.

The building was registered by the Municipal Council of the Cultural and Historical Heritage of Belo Horizonte, in June of 1990 and is part of the protection of the surroundings of the Praça da Liberdade ensemble, as described by the Iepha-MG in 1977.