ملف:Clock Tower (10015448913).jpg

About: In the mid-19th century, the São Paulo Railway Company, a privately owned British railway company, laid a snaking network of tracks over Brazil’s green mountains. In order to transport coffee beans from inland plantations to the port of Santos on the south coast, a railroad funicular was incorporated that could lift entire trains full of cargo over the undulating terrain.

A British company provided the steam engines that drove the operation and also founded a workers’ village on the highest point in the area, called Paranapiacaba, meaning “a place to view the sea” in Tupi-Guarani. The small houses for railway and funicular employees were constructed from wood, in a style similar to those of British mining towns.

Paranapiacaba’s civic buildings and larger homes were Victorian in design, and its train station was adorned with a clock tower in imitation of London’s Big Ben.

Source: World Monuments Fund