Town hall

The palace on Rua do Comércio, formerly Rua dos Ferreiros (‘blacksmiths’), which houses the Municipal Council (Câmara Municipal), the Municipal Administration (Administração do Concelho, the government's local civil office), the police, the land registry (Conservatória), etc. (1921), belonged to the entailed house (casa vinculada) of the Count of Carvalhal (‘oak grove’) and is one of the largest buildings on the island. It was built in 1758, and it contained improvements (benfeitorias, buildings and walls made by the tenant, which remained his property) that formed part of the unentailed property of the holder of the entail (morgado) João Agostinho Figueiroa de França e Albuquerque. The part of the palace that belonged to the Count of Carvalhal was ceded by him to the trading firm Freitas & Macedo in payment of debts. The remaining parts, owned by Afonso de Albuquerque, the Count of Calçada (‘paved way’), Francisco Roque de Albuquerque, Dr Luís Vicente de Afonseca and others, were acquired by the same firm through purchases made at different times.

The Council rented the palace from the Count of Carvalhal in 1868, and on 4 August 1883 bought it from Freitas & Macedo for 25 contos, paid in bonds of the Companhia Geral de Crédito Predial Português which, reduced to their official quotation, yielded the sum of 22,423,900 réis (old Portuguese money of account; 1$000 = 1,000 réis, 1:000$000 = one conto = 1,000,000 réis). Before this, the Council could have acquired the building for 12 contos, but it failed to seize the opportunity it was offered of concluding a highly profitable deal for the municipality.

The present town hall (Paços do Concelho) building once housed the English trading house Blackburns & Comp.ª and later the British consul George Stoddart. The Count of Carvalhal had his residence in the Palácio de São Pedro (St Peter Palace).

Before it acquired the magnificent building facing the Largo do Município, or Largo do Colégio (Colégio, ‘the College’), the Council met in various parts of Funchal. The first building it owned, though not the first in which it held its meetings, was built under an order of Duke Manuel I dated 1486, which directed that a ‘stronghold, council chamber, notaries’ house & pillory’ be built on the square called the Campo do Duque (‘duke’s field’), the ground on which the Cathedral (the Sé) and its adjoining squares and streets now stand. As early as 1470 a letter from Infante Ferdinand to the donatary João Gonçalves da Câmara had asked him to undertake ‘to build the council house & the council pound’ out of the money from the fines of the judge-auditor & of João Gonçalves himself’. The same Infante ordered land to be given beside the great church for this building, which was estimated at 213,096 réis (old Portuguese money of account; 1$000 = 1,000 réis, 1:000$000 = one conto = 1,000,000 réis).

Until 1784 the town hall remained in the building erected on the Campo do Duque, but in that year the Council began to hold its meetings in the Casa da Saúde, at the Entrada da Cidade (‘entrance to the city’), because that building was in a very poor state of repair. The Campo do Duque building stood on the site occupied today (1921) by house no. 61 in the street named after Lieutenant-Commander Carvalho de Araújo, formerly the Rua do Aljube (‘bishop’s prison’). Its ruins, valued at 432,000 réis, were sold by award by public auction (arrematação) to Dr António José Monteiro for 432,250 réis on 30 March 1805.

In 1796 the Council rented a building belonging to Fernando José Correia Brandão for 500,000 réis a year, but it occupied it only until 10 March 1798, since its meagre revenues did not allow it to pay so high a rent. It moved back to the Casa da Saúde, where it held its first session on the 31st of the same month and year.

On 7 January 1797 the Council, meeting with the nobility and the people in the town hall, resolved unanimously to ask the Government for a subsidy that would allow it to erect a building to house the various services in its charge. It was suggested that this building might be put up in the Rua do Cotife, the part of the present Rua da Sé lying between the Rua do Sabão and the Rua dos Capelistas. As the Council’s petition went unanswered, the building could not be carried out.

On 13 November 1802 the Council held its first session in the house on the Largo da Sé which in our own day served as the gaol of the judicial district (comarca). On 30 June 1803 it took possession of that house, having obtained it ‘by award at auction from the Royal Treasury Board (Junta da Real Fazenda), which had seized it from the farmstead (casal) of Dona Guiomar Madalena Acciaioly for debts to the National Treasury (Fazenda Nacional).’ On 20 December 1813 one of the guild representatives (mesteres) proposed that the house on the Largo da Sé be sold and the proceeds applied to building a new town hall and a new gaol, but the proposal was rejected by the other members of the Council.

As various works were carried out on the town hall in 1824 so that the gaol could be installed there, the Municipality spent some time in a rented house, returning to the building on the Largo da Sé on 29 April 1825, once those works had been completed. In 1837 the Council again left the building ‘because of the noxious smell of the prisons, where there were 180 prisoners’. It settled first in the Casa da Saúde and then in a building belonging to Dr Daniel de Ornelas, which it resolved to leave at its session of 16 May 1838, to occupy a house on the Largo do Pelourinho (‘pillory’), on the site where today (1921) stands the flour mill that belonged to the commercial firm Viúva de Romano Gomes & Filhos.

The flash flood (aluvião) of 24 October 1842 caused considerable damage to the building on the Largo do Pelourinho, so in 1843 the Council moved to the Asylum building in the locality of Angústias. It stayed there only two years, however, returning in 1845 to the house on the Largo da Sé. In July 1846 the Council decided once more to occupy the Angústias building, but at the beginning of 1848 it moved to a building in the Rua da Alfândega, having resolved at its session of 2 December 1847 to hand the said building over to the Administrative Committee (Comissão Administrativa) of the Asylum.

The last building to serve as the town hall before the present one stood in the Rua do Esmeraldo, opposite the Rua de Cristóvão Colombo; the Council took it on lease at its session of 2 August 1862.

Some 80 years ago the Municipal Council (Câmara Municipal) sought to put up, on the site then occupied by the convent of São Francisco and now by the Jardim Municipal (‘municipal garden’), a building to house the law courts, the town hall and the administration and tax office of the municipality (concelho). In 1864 it opened a competition for the design and estimate of this building. The rules laid down that the design placed first would receive a prize of 240,000 island réis (old Portuguese money of account; 1$000 = 1,000 réis, 1:000$000 = one conto = 1,000,000 réis) (50 pounds) and the runner-up the sum of 72,000 island réis (15 pounds). The ranking was to be made by a committee made up of the district judges and public prosecutors of the two judicial districts (comarcas) then existing on the island, the two engineers directing the public and military works of the district, and the president of the Council.

The design judged most suitable and appropriate was the one submitted by Samuel Sloan & A. Hulton, of Philadelphia, and the runner-up that of Frutuoso Abel Maria dos Santos, of Lisbon. The Council had the result of the competition published in the local newspapers on 2 March 1865. On 19 April of the same year the Council ordered the demolition of the part of the convent of São Francisco that was still standing, and on 11 March 1866, the work needed before construction could begin being already complete, the ceremony of laying the foundation stone of the building took place. Besides the Council, it was attended by the Bishop, the Civil and Military Governor and all the authorities and distinguished persons of the town.

The works on the town hall in Rua de São Francisco were estimated at 40 contos, but they never rose above the foundations, and even these were demolished when the Jardim Municipal was laid out (see Convent of São Francisco of Funchal, vol. I, p. 312). The building was to have a ground floor and a first floor: the former for the law courts and their offices, and the latter for the municipality and the administration and tax office of the municipality.

In 1807 the Council archive was moved to a house in Santa Luzia belonging to Dona Ana Cecília, wife of Agostinho Pedro Pereira, and in 1811 to the parish (freguesia) of Monte, from which it did not return until 1818. These moves were prompted by fears of an enemy landing at Funchal. In 1824 the archive was kept for some months in the residence of the clerk of the Council (escrivão da Câmara), because the town hall building was undergoing works.

All the municipal councils of the archipelago, except those of São Vicente and Ribeira Brava, own their own buildings, but only those of Santa Cruz and Porto Santo occupy, it seems, their original premises, enlarged or improved to a greater or lesser degree. The original town hall of Machico was recently demolished, and the Council is building another on the same site (1921). That of Calheta, which stood beside the beach, was destroyed by the sea before 1871, and the municipal archive was lost on that occasion. The old council house of Ponta do Sol was destroyed by fire, and the same happened to that of Câmara de Lobos, though we are unable to establish the years in which these disasters took place.