From the small palace to the tenement: the use of hydraulic tiles in São Paulo city’s buildings in the turn from 19th to 20th century

This paper is about the use of hydraulic tiles (a type of flooring resulted from the mixture of Portland cement with sand, water, marble and granite, and that features colorful drawings of geometric or floral shapes) in some constructions built in the city of São Paulo at the turn of the 20th century – more specifically during the last decades of the 19th century and during the first decades of the 20th. We aim to demonstrate here how this building material, which was at first used on the floor of the richest houses of São Paulo city (such as some of the ancient small palaces) as symbol of status, would spread out little by little, being found in other types of buildings, like some old houses of working class people, and even in one of the poorest types of housing in the city – the tenement; we also associate the different degrees of complexity on tiles design to the income level of their original owners – the more complex the design, the higher the price of each piece and therefore the richer the building’s owner. Also noteworthy is how this handmade material is still valued by architects and other professionals today due to the richness of its drawings, its colors and the diversity of possibilities when making a composition with it