Qualla: Usina do Gasômetro

Usina do Gasômetro: Introduction

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit marcusrg, CC BY 2.0. Every evening, a peninsula on the edge of Lake Guaíba fills with people who have come to watch the same thing: the sun sliding down behind the water, silhouetting a single soaring chimney against an orange sky. The chimney belongs to the Usina do Gasômetro, a power plant that the city once planned to knock down. Instead it became the most photographed postcard in Porto Alegre - a brick-and-iron survivor whose 117-meter smokestack now marks not industry but the best sunset in the south of Brazil.

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Image: marcusrg | CC BY 2.0

Usina do Gasômetro: A Name That Lies About Itself

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Leo0711, CC BY 2.5. Start with the name, because it is misleading. Usina do Gasômetro means roughly the gasholder plant, yet this station never ran on gas. It burned coal. The word gasômetro came from the neighborhood, an area called the Volta do Gasômetro that had taken its name from an older nearb...

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Image: Leo0711 | CC BY 2.5

Usina do Gasômetro: American Power on a Brazilian River

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Tetraktys, CC BY-SA 3.0. The thermal power station was inaugurated on November 11, 1928, as the headquarters of the Companhia Brasil de Força Elétrica - a subsidiary of the American firm Electric Bond and Share Company, which controlled Porto Alegre's electricity and electric transport until 1954. The pl...

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Image: Tetraktys | CC BY-SA 3.0

Usina do Gasômetro: Saved From the Wrecking Ball

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Francisped, CC BY-SA 4.0. What happened next nearly didn't. The municipal government wanted the plant gone, the land cleared to extend Perimetral avenue straight through the riverfront. A power station turned to rubble for a road - it would have been an ordinary fate for an old industrial hulk. But civil ...

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Image: Francisped | CC BY-SA 4.0

Usina do Gasômetro: Where the City Comes to Watch the Light

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit marcusrg - Hello, nice to meet you!, CC BY 2.0. Today the Usina do Gasômetro is six floors of galleries, theaters, and performance spaces wrapped inside its restored brick shell. But its true stage is outside. The plant sits on the tip of a peninsula jutting into Lake Guaíba, which faces west - and so each evening the building...

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Image: marcusrg - Hello, nice to meet you! | CC BY 2.0