Before we start, I know you have a question: why do they call it Brooklin? Let's get that one out of the way right now. (For hotel recommendations in the region, scroll down to the end of this page. For more on Brazil’s biggest city, see the BrazilMax São Paulo Travel Guide.)
Once upon a time, both São Paulo and New York were crisscrossed by trolley cars. The Brooklyn Dodgers earned their original name, "the Trolley Dodgers," from the gymnastics that pedestrians had to perform to get out of the way of the oncoming trams.
As one veteran ex-pat tells it, São Paulo bought a bunch of cut-rate trolley cars from New York City. One regularly traversed a line that went southward to the outskirts of town. To a distant area where German and English immigrants had been among the first to sniff out good land deals. That car came embossed with "Brooklyn" across the front. People started associating the name on the trolley with the last stop on the line. The rest is history. Or at least a name.
Since the 1930s, within the lifetimes of some of those early pioneers, Brooklyn with a "y" has been transformed from a grassy marshland and forest dotted by a handful of small holdings and modest homes into Brooklin with an "i" - a middle-class residential neighborhood, home to important foreign companies and a focal point for new commercial office development. (The change of "y" to "i" was an unrelated phenomenon, reflecting an official decision to reform the spellings of words in Portuguese.)
Despite today's generally high-density of occupation, Brooklin's residential pockets can still be reminiscent of a time when, as one old-timer put it: "You felt like you were living in a European village."
The neighborhood is still characterized by single-family homes, many built in chalet style and "well prepared for the snow that never fell," as the daily newspaper Folha de S.Paulo once put it. That ambiance is most evident in the strictly residential Brooklin Velho, or "Old Brooklin," south of the Rua Joaquim Nabuco. Thanks to that and its centralized location, the area is popular with multinational executives and other foreigners.
In the automobile era, once-distant Brooklin has become centrally located: it lies just six miles from downtown, snuggled between the Marginal Pinheiros freeway and the Congonhas National Airport, near a growing number of office complexes and industrial parks.
In the late 19th century, those rare city residents who ventured as far as Brooklin called the region Volta Redonda. It was known for its sharply curving trails that wound around sharp little hills. The traveler would catch the little steam train that chugged down from the Liberdade district near downtown. Inaugurated in 1886, the trenzinho (little train) and its successors the trolley cars, or bondes, served as stimulus to growth in São Paulo's South Zone. Neighborhoods began to sprout up along its route. (Sidelight: the bonde earned its name because the construction of lines was financed via the sale of - what else? - bonds.)
Even as late as the 1940s, though, things were still quite rustic. Rua Nova York (New York Street) in Brooklin Novo, until recently shared democratically by middle class families and a shantytown, was home to two houses and a eucalyptus grove. The handful of residents all knew one another, children played in the streets, and the loudest noises were made by chirping birds.
When I spoke with him a few years ago, Casimiro O'Czerny, born in 1905 and a descendant of Polish immigrants, summed up the popular attitude at the time: "I moved from the city to Brooklin in 1940," he said matter-of-factly. The region was considered a rural backland.
An accomplished skydiver, O'Czerny used to land in his own neighborhood. He took some of the first aerial photographs of the then nearly vacant region. He hung out at the Kolping-Haus Club, frequented by Germans and their descendants in Brooklin since 1939. More than half of the club's 1,200 members speak German and 90% live in the vicinity of its Brooklin headquarters.
German-born writer Elisabeth Loibl moved to Brazil and Brooklin in 1948, when she was five. Her arrival marked a homecoming for her family, which had lived in the neighborhood prior to returning to Germany in 1938. Her parents described the Brooklin of the 1920s as something akin to today's Mato Grosso state. They even tell of taking frequent dips in the "refreshing clear waters" of the Pinheiros river, today at best stagnant cesspool of human and industrial waste. During Loibl's own childhood, dirt roads were still the norm. She attended a neighborhood school run by German nuns; extra-curricula activities included bee keeping and tending vegetable gardens.
When I spoke with her a few years ago, Loibl still lived in the same house where she had grown up. She recalled how the neighborhood began to boom in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The trolley line that helped name the neighborhood was discontinued in 1968. Its days were numbered with the widening of the main drag, Avenida Santo Amaro, in 1950 and the growth of the Brazilian auto industry later that decade.
Soon industry began to find spaces within the residential neighborhood. In the mid-1970s, development company Bratke-Collet began looking for a site with cheap land and good road access that offered room for expansion and was near a residential area. The mission: to erect office buildings. The choice was Brooklin's "drainage ditch," a semi-swampland until recently populated by a makeshift shantytown.
As the story goes, architect Carlos Bratke sacrificed a planned European vacation and spent the $20,000 he had saved to purchase land adjacent to a favela (shantytown) in an area famous for flooding.
In the subsequent two decades, his company has parlayed that investment into one of the most bullish development projects in São Paulo. The region, named after its main drag, Avenida Berrini, has become one of the city's most sought-after concentrations of business offices. Most recently, the Globo Network erected a sprawling arrangement of studios and offices. Next door, BankBoston and Hyatt are building high rises.
Soon Brooklin with a "y" will be little more than a memory.
Brooklin and Berrini Hotel Recommendations
* For more detailed reviews of these properties and suggestions in other parts of town, see our São Paulo Hotel Recommendations page.
Gran Estanplaza São Paulo
Set astride the World Trade Center office complex, this hotel holds its own with the best in this part of town – positioning itself as an authentically Brazilian option amid globalized neighbors like the Hilton. In contrast to many of its upscale competitors in São Paulo, the Gran Estanplaza still offers the traditional Brazilian complimentary breakfast spread for all guests. Rua Arizona 1517; telephone: + 55 11 3059-3277.
Hilton São Paulo Morumbi
This $90 million hotel stands adjacent to the São Paulo’s World Trade Center office complex. First class in every respect, down to the restaurant’s wine list, this hotel was chosen to host then-US President George W. Bush during his 2007 visit to the city. Avenida das Nacões Unidas, 12901; telephone: +55 11 6845-0000.
Grand Hyatt São Paulo
This establishment – located, at the time, within five minutes walking distance of BrazilMax headquarters in Brooklin - opened to rave reviews in 2002. Since then, however, it seems to be resting on its laurels. This property still counts among the city's top players, but the level of service seems to be lagging in comparison to neighboring competitors like the Hilton Morumbi, Gran Estanplaza and Blue Tree Morumbi. If you are a Hyatt person or if you have business at the Globo TV studios nextdoor, go for it. Otherwise look elsewhere. Avenida das Nações Unidas, 13301; telephone: +55 11 6838 1234.
Blue Tree Hotels – Blue Tree caters to women business executives with an Asian touch, reflecting the personality of founder and CEO Chieko Aoki. We inspected two of their properties in São Paulo, and stayed in one of those. Verdict: good quality but overpriced. Here are some of their leading offerings in the region:
* Blue Tree Morumbi
* Blue Tree Berrini
Estanplaza
The Gran Estanplaza (see above) claims to attempt to add a Brazilian touch to its services. We have visited the flagship property, but none of the apparently no-nonsense business-oriented spin-offs. In any case, here are some links to properties in the region:
* Estanplaza Berrini
* Estanplaza Nações Unidas
BrazilMax’s Bill Hinchberger talks about Brooklin, his old neighborhood, on CNN.com
