at a glance

The Padre Miguel Neighborhood is Located in the zona oeste (West Zone) of Rio de Janeiro and shares an intimate history with the two neighborhoods that envelope it: bangu to the west and realengo to the east. The whole area once belonged to the Barata family, who had several ranches and farms dotted between the Pedra Branca and Mendanha ridges.

One of these areas of land, dubbed the Rancho Pedra Branca, or the 'White Stone Ranch', would be used to create part of Avenida Brasil, or 'Brazil Avenue' and the surrounding urban infrastructure. In the 1940s the region now known as the Padre Miguel received a train station. Interestingly, this station was temporarily named Moça Bonita (Pretty Girl) station, because of a local, female resident who enchanted the students at the Escola de Realengo.

The subsequent name of the station was selected in honor of another local personality, Padre Miguel de Santa Maria Mochon, a Spanish cleric who moved to Rio de Janeiro at the turn of the century and was instrumental in the catechization and education of populations of the northern regions of the growing city. He reformed the Igreja Nossa Senhora da Conceiçao, or the 'Church of Our Lady of the Conception', and created the first regular school in the region.