Department of Transportation and Public Works

(Former Secretariat of Agriculture)

The building of the Department of Transportation and Public Works is part of the civic center of the state administration of the foundation of the new capital. In its ground floor operated, until 1910, the Belo Horizonte city hall. It was listed by the state in 1977, as part of the Architectural and Landscape Ensemble of Praça da Liberdade.

The “green building,” as it is popularly known, has a beautiful hall that is accessed from the square level by a granite staircase. From the hall, there is a cast iron staircase, made by the Belgian company Societé des Acieries de Bruges. It is an artwork that was installed in an innovative system for the time, the joly, that allows for supporting its own weight.

The building was designed by architect José de Magalhães had its construction initiated in 1895, executed by the Construction Commission of the New Capital, and was inaugurated in 1897. It has an eclectic style with influence of Neoclassical. Between the second and third floors, there is a door and a stained-glass window leading to a balcony, leaning over the inner courtyard. On the walls of the great hall there are wall paintings by painter Frederico Antônio Steckel.

The rest of the building consists of large rooms, with enormous distances from floor to ceiling. In the posterior facade, it has a secondary entrance, of less sumptuousness than the main and that is a level below this one. It has about 9 thousand square meters distributed in four floors. It was registered as cultural and historical heritage by the municipality of Belo Horizonte in 1994.

It was the last building to be incorporated into the Cultural Circuit of Praça da Liberdade, as home of the cultural heritage of Minas Gerais. Its restoration project is still in the process of being elaborated, and once executed, will house an equipment which will articulate both cultural content and cultural heritage.

It will be the institutional headquarters of the State Institute of Historic and Artistic Heritage of Minas Gerais (Iepha-MG) and cultural space open to the public. There will be spaces art exhibitions, workshop for restoration of protected documentary and three-dimensional collections, nuclei of traditional construction techniques, specialized library, spaces for advice to municipalities, meetings of cultural and cultural heritage councils, and committees of communities involved in safeguarding the intangible heritage.