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U.Porto Memory

Rectory Building of the U.Porto - West Side

Praça de Parada Leitão

The Praça de Parada Leitão [Parada Leitão Square] is located on the west side of the Rectory building, named by the City Council of Porto in honour of Major José Parada Leitão (1809-1880), founder of the newspaper "Jornal da Associação Industrial Portuense", a liberal fighter and teacher of Physics at the Polytechnic Academy of Porto and at the Porto Industrial School, which he helped found in 1852.

In the early years of the 20^th century, major works were carried out in the building as a result of the expropriation and demolition of a block of houses close to the west façade of the building, which at the time housed the Polytechnic Academy of Porto. The road separating those houses and the building of the Polytechnic Academy of Porto was called "Passeios da Graça", an allusion to the Colégio dos Meninos Órfãos de Nossa Senhora da Graça [College of Orphaned Children] which was housed in the Academy building; in 1903, it was transferred to a former Seminary near the Prado do Repouso Cemetery. The carriages travelling between the city and Foz do Douro stopped in the Passeios.
The restructuring of the area also led to the demolition of some houses facing the Churches of Carmo and Carmelitas, and of other facing the opposite side, that is, the Cordoaria building.

A straight and winding road first called Viela dos Condenados and later Viela do Assis - named after the Porto-born doctor Francisco de Assis de Sousa Vaz - separated the houses that were demolished and those that faced the west façade of the Rectory building. We can still see the house in which the reputed doctor was born and lived. He looked after King Carlos Alberto in 1849 when he was ill during his short stay in Porto: a round house on the corner of Parada Leitão Square and Campo dos Mártires da Pátria.
This building once housed the Hotel Portugal and more recently the French Consulate services.

The square named Parada Leitão was once called Largo do Carmo.