Praia do Recreio dos Bandeirantes

This guide to Praia do Recreio dos Bandeirantes in Rio de Janeiro traces how an American named Joseph Wesley Finch turned an empty, mosquito-ridden stretch of dune into one of the city's most sought-after addresses in the 1920s. It follows his sales theater, chartered buses from downtown Rio and a feijoada waiting on the sand, and the wealthy Sao Paulo families who kept coming back to buy lots and build summer houses. The name Recreio dos Bandeirantes, their leisure spot of the bandeirantes, stuck harder than any deed ever could.