{"id":83464,"date":"2026-05-31T09:03:33","date_gmt":"2026-05-31T12:03:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/?p=83464"},"modified":"2026-06-01T09:14:29","modified_gmt":"2026-06-01T12:14:29","slug":"ary-barroso-park-in-penha-has-suffered-decades-of-government-neglect-and-is-at-risk-of-disappearing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/?p=83464","title":{"rendered":"Critical Urban Park in Rio de Janeiro\u2019s North Zone Is at Risk of Disappearing After Decades of Government Neglect"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"The<\/a>
The history of Ary Barroso Park is marked by struggle, but also resilience. Photos by: Arthur Lucena<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Clique aqui para Portugu\u00eas<\/strong><\/i><\/em><\/i><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/i>This article is part of a\u00a0<\/i><\/i>series<\/a>\u00a0created in partnership with the\u00a0Behner Stiefel Center for Brazilian Studies<\/a>\u00a0at San Diego State University, to produce articles for the\u00a0Digital Brazil Project<\/a>\u00a0on environmental justice in the favelas through RioOnWatch.<\/em><\/p>\n

Ary Barroso Park is an important green recreational space and the only park dedicated to serving the Leopoldina region<\/a> in Rio de Janeiro’s North Zone<\/a>. However, due to a lack of government attention, the park risks disappearing completely, which would further worsen the intense heat affecting the region.<\/p>\n

Inaugurated on December 13, 1964, in the Penha Circular<\/a> neighborhood in the North Zone, Ary Barroso Park was built on the former grounds of Ch\u00e1cara das Palmeiras, which at the time belonged to Francisco Lobo J\u00fanior<\/a>, an influential Portuguese entrepreneur.<\/p>\n

Penha, then occupied by upper-middle-class homes, was chosen to receive what was considered a “replica<\/a>” of Quinta da Boa Vista<\/a>, which until then had been the city’s most widely visited green leisure space.<\/p>\n

It is worth noting that Penha sits within the Leopoldina region, which in the past was an important industrial and residential hub precisely because it was crossed by the former Leopoldina Railway<\/a>, currently the Gramacho Branch of the city’s train system. After opening to the public, Ary Barroso Park became the first and largest park in the Leopoldina suburban area and was listed as a historic landmark of the state of Rio de Janeiro on October 8, 1965.<\/p>\n

Ary Barroso Park’s Golden Years<\/h3>\n
\"Ary
Ary Barroso Park in the 1970s. The sports courts were located in the corner of the park, while the playground can be seen on the left side of the photo. Photo: Ag\u00eancia Globo<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The park was designed with a lake at its center, surrounded by two small waterfalls, a playground, three sports courts and other structures linked to Lobo J\u00fanior’s former home, all laid out over a sloping 50,000-square-meter plot. To give a sense of scale, city government data equates the area to seven official soccer fields<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Ary Barroso Park was conceived to resemble a woodland, a green space defined by shade-giving trees. Its original green reserve held over 300 plant species, including purple and pink quaresmeiras<\/em>, purple, yellow and white ip\u00ea<\/em> trees, mulungu<\/em> trees, African tulip trees, red flamboyants and yellow and purple cassias.<\/p>\n

Its artificial waterfalls were powered by pumps that supplied a ten-centimeter-deep flow of water over a three-meter stretch. Water was pumped up to the source from a pump house at the highest point of the park, from where it flowed down in the form of a waterfall over two lakes before being collected and recirculated.<\/p>\n

In the sports area, three courts were used for soccer, basketball and other sports and physical activities, such as capoeira<\/em> and tai chi. They featured bleachers and a locker room that once served as the home base for Portinho Futebol Clube<\/a>. The playground was also popular with both local residents and people from across the city.<\/p>\n

The park’s name honors Brazilian singer and composer Ary Barroso<\/a>, who died in February of the same year it opened. Barroso was chosen because he was a devoted attendee of the Penha Festival<\/a>, a traditional religious celebration honoring the neighborhood’s patron saint, and even composed a song that mentions the area<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The park’s heyday was short-lived, however, undermined by a series of factors including exclusionary housing policies and deep social inequalities.<\/p>\n

From Oasis to Abandonment: A Timeline of Environmental Racism at Ary Barroso Park<\/h3>\n

As early as the 1960s, the city of Rio de Janeiro underwent major demographic and urban changes, among them the forced removal<\/a> of favela residents from the South Zone<\/a> to areas in the North and West Zones<\/a>. In this traumatic chapter of the city’s history, an estimated 140,000 people were forcibly displaced<\/a>. That number today would be equivalent to the entire population of Complexo da Mar\u00e9<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"Images<\/a>
Images of Ary Barroso Park published in O Globo<\/em><\/a> in 1964, 1972 and 1986.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Penha area, like the entire Leopoldina region<\/a>, which had previously been home to the elite, became home to low-income residents displaced from other areas through housing projects, becoming a site of intense and unplanned urban expansion. During this same period, Rio de Janeiro ceased to be the federal capital, contributing to the economic decline of both the city and its industrial complex. The Leopoldina region felt those effects as well. Land was subdivided and sold<\/a> to middle-class buyers, with no provision for green or recreational areas, only residential units.<\/p>\n

This drove even greater urban expansion into an area that already had little tree cover, turning the Leopoldina region into a heat island<\/a>. Neglect became part of daily life at Ary Barroso Park, which entered a long and painful process of deterioration.<\/p>\n

By 1979, for example, the park’s facilities were already obsolete due to abandonment, with water that was no longer very clean and little security. Just five years earlier, in 1974, the situation had been different: the park had served as an important source of water security for the area during a severe water shortage in the city. It was Ary Barroso Park’s lake that allowed Penha residents to meet basic hygiene needs, such as bathing and washing clothes.<\/p>\n