Para a cidade, um gabinete de leitura

Abstract

The article aims to understand the process of the emergence of the Jundiaí Reading Office and its representation in the city space where it was built. Founded in 1908, in the municipality of Jundiaí, located in the western region of the State of São Paulo, the institution was created by a group of employees of Companhia Paulista de Estradas de Ferro. It was intended to be a space for instruction, promoting a book sociability, through literary ceremonials and ceremonies and a school of first letters to associates and regulars. This article analyzes the minutes of meetings of the institution and other written and printed sources, such as statistical reports from the State of São Paulo, to make the hypothesis that the Jundiaí Reading Office has been configured as a space for books, To the practice of reading, being the first public library of the city of Jundiaí. The time and space in which the institution emerged are revealing of a period of urban transformation, generating the representation of an environment of literacy for the patrons, where new social arrangements were experienced, in the order of the First Republic.