THE NEW QUITANDINHA - Instituto Art Deco Brasil

ARCHITECTURE QUITANDINHA
THE NEW QUITANDINHA
Entrance hall at the old casino and theater. Repetition of the diamond shape theme
on the lattice and the black and white marble floors, integrated with the Copacabana
MÄrcio Alves Roiter goes to PetrÅpolis
to check out the renovation of one style sidewalk outside. The fuchsia pink walls alternating with white frames and finishing –
Photos by Romulo Fialdini of Brazil’s most beautiful palaces especially seashells – were a Dorothy Draper trademark

ARCHITECTURE QUITANDINHA
The sign on Rio-PetrÅpolis road indicates, laconically: Quitandinha Palace. Even if we could read
what Cholly Knickerbocker wrote on the New York Journal, in 1944, the year when the largest
resort and casino in Latin America was opened, we would not be prepared for what we were
about to see. And the social columnist had solemnly stated: “Southern hemisphere’s Monte
Carlo, Quitandinha is like a dream right out of The Arabian Nights or The Wizard of Oz.”
The old casino, which would start to wither only two years later due to president Dutra’s decree
forbidding gambling, has gone through an extensive renovation and now hold exhibits, parties,
events, besides lectures promoted by Casa do Saber. Wish traveled to PetrÅpolis to see up close
the transformation of one of the most beautiful Brazilian buildings.
For a long time many asked what would happen to the palace, which had become during the
1960s the Santa Paula Quitandinha Club, but bore no resemblance to the shinning glory of the
1940s. In 2007, Sesc, a Brazilian commerce organization, acquired Quitandinha’s common areas
– all the halls and installations except for the apartments – and has been conducting a detailed
restoration project.
On this page, above, the old casino’s Hollywood style staircase, floor with a mosaic created with
several types of marble, with huge and intricately carved painted wooden candle-holders. All of the
furniture was made by Brazilian cabinet-makers and craftsmen, following the designed by DD; to the
left, black marble stairs to the theater, and empty lit niche, another resource present in the decorator’s
vocabulary
On the next page, sitting 1200 people, the theater is entirely original. The ceiling, with its consecutive
concave layers, repeats the aesthetic/acoustic effect created inside New York’s Radio City Music Hall
(1932) and Cinema Roxy in Copacabana (1938). Recently, it was used as a location for television series
Dalva and Herivelto

ARCHITECTURE QUITANDINHA
It is almost done, and already houses intense cultural activity. Anti-minimalism Palace,
Quitandinha is considered the world’s largest example of an encounter between international
Art DÜco and Brazilian Baroque. It has been studied and visited by admirers of the first great
American decorator, Dorothy Draper. After a forty-year career, she would realize there her
most ambitious project.
NÜe Dorothy Tuckerman, in 1889, to the gilded New York high-society, heir to the developer
of the Tuxedo Park (an exclusive condominium 20 kilometers from Manhattan), Dorothy
married future American president Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s personal doctor, George
Draper, in 1912. Upon her divorce, 17 years later, she had to reinvent herself – which led
her to coin the phrase: “American women are divided into two classes, the happily married
and the decorators.”
Her bold style and the success of projects like the Hampshire House hotels, on Central Park
South, the Carlyle, on Upper East Side, both in New York, the Fairmont and the Mark
Hopkins, in San Francisco, echoed in the ears of the biggest casino owner in Brazil, and one
of the ten richest men in the country, the former cattle driver from the state of Minas Gerais,
Joaquim Rolla.
On the previous
page, one of the
immense
balconies,
waiting for the
end of the
restoration to
house once
again its original
furniture,
covered in
fabric, some
striped, others
printed with
tropical flowers
and leaves.
Below, in the
indoor garden,
sits the huge
painted iron
cage with a
fountain inside,
which displayed
dozens of
Brazilian birds
during
Quitandinha’s
glory days.

ARCHITECTURE QUITANDINHA
She was all he needed: a well-connected New York W.A.S.P., owner of an original style,
and above all a beautiful six-foot-tall light-colored-eyed woman. In 1942, as he started to
build his megalomaniac project, Joaquim Rolla saw in Dorothy the perfect character to
design the interior of his palace. On the outside, Quitandinha had a Norman style,
reflecting the vision of architect Luis Fossati, loved by Rio de Janeiro dwellers, from Urca
to Grajaá. Inside, a carte blanche was issued for all the American’s fantasies, mixing
Brazilian Baroque architecture, Art DÜco geometry, and very colorful tropical leaves and
flowers on folding screens, fabrics, and wallpapers. And stripes, lots of stripes, which,
combined with the geometric floors, contrasted with the volute of finishing, lightning and
the white plaster and stucco columns. “Dorothy Draper was to decorating what Chanel
was to fashion,” compared Carleton Varney, her former assistant.
Back then, it was not hard to convince Dorothy to take part on the gigantic adventure of
filling 50 thousand square meters, 13 halls, skating rink and 440 apartments. Her fee,
which would now amount to US$ 1.5 million, was insignificant if compared to the total
building cost, a substantial investment of over US$ 650 million. A curiosity: the designs for
furniture, lamps, doors, and everything else came from Dorothy’s drawing board in New
York, but were built by Brazilian artisans. It is no surprise to see that the most
comprehensive book on the American decorator, written in 2006 by Varney, had the
Quitandinha on the cover, and was called In the Pink: Dorothy Draper, America’s Most
Fabulous Decorator.
On the previous page,
the lobby of the old
hotel, with the huge
Baroque chandelier, a
style that is repeated on
the door to the Dom
Pedro Hall,
counterbalanced by the
Art DÜco
columns/lamps. On the
floor, a star-shaped
marble mosaic, another
of Dorothy Draper’s
trademarks.
Above, gallery with
damier floor in black and
white marble, leading to
the indoor garden.
Baroque shells, vases
and pedestals made of
plaster and wood
counterbalance the
geometric floors