Avenida Paulista

This guide to Avenida Paulista in São Paulo follows the fate of one coffee-baron mansion, a thirty-five-room palacete built in 1905 by the Franco de Mello family, as developers levelled its neighbors in the 1950s and 60s to raise the glass towers now lining the avenue. It traces the family's dispute after the state declared the house a protected landmark in 1992, and the disrepair that followed while nobody could agree who should pay to save it. Vines climbed the walls and paint peeled while the house sat empty.