An 1866 neoclassical landmark that went from orphanage to art museum to private school.
Landmark buildingThe long neoclassical building at Rua General Severiano 159 is one of Botafogo's largest historic structures — a symmetrical, colonnaded block on a 12,000 m² plot near the Botafogo club grounds, between the beach and the access to Urca. Cariocas of different generations know it by different names: Educandário Santa Teresa, Casa Daros, and now Escola Eleva.
The building is protected heritage, so its facade and proportions are fixed regardless of occupant. The surrounding blocks of General Severiano are a mix of office buildings, the Botafogo football club headquarters and residential towers, with Praia de Botafogo and the Pasmado tunnel to Copacabana both close by.
Address: Rua General Severiano 159, Botafogo, Rio de Janeiro
The land was donated to the Santa Casa da Misericórdia in 1819, and the building went up in 1866 to a design by Francisco Joaquim Bethencourt da Silva, one of the leading Brazilian architects of the era. For most of its first century it housed charitable schooling — first the Recolhimento de Santa Teresa orphanage for girls, later the Educandário Santa Teresa.
The Santa Casa sold the property in 2006 to the Swiss collection Daros Latinamerica, which restored it over several years and ran it as the Casa Daros contemporary-art museum from 2013 to 2015. The Eleva Educação group then acquired it, and since 2017 it has operated as the flagship campus of Escola Eleva, a private bilingual school.
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