From text to trace: the cross analise of primary documentation for the conjectural reconstitution of the urban space of Campinas in the 19th century

Abstract

This article deals with the use of primary documents of different kinds in investigations in the field of Urban History. This research is based on three archives of the city of Campinas, SP: the Memory Center – Unicamp (CMU), the Municipal Archive and the Documentary Archive of the City Council. The processes of occupation and transformation of the urban space of Campinas, during the second half of the 19th century, were analyzed based on the individual trajectory of an agent of the local landowning elite, the Baron of Itapura. The method consists in scrutinizing distinct primary sources, extracting spatial information from documents, which traditionally were seen as merely textual. Through the analysis of the individual trajectory of the Baron of Itapura, the research proposes the conjectural reconstitution of parts of the urban space of Campinas in different scales: of the architecture, presenting the hypothesis of the implantation and of the original program needs of the main residence of the Baron; of the city, through the delimitation of Chácara Itapura and the identification of other urban properties, which were part of the patrimony of this agent; and of the interface of the urban space with the rural space, through the reconstitution of the urban limits, then called frames of the city of Campinas.