It was Thursday, May 13, 1926. It rained so hard that Father Jayme Câmara’s cassock dripped water while he tried to bless the work. It didn’t matter. The crowd came anyway.
Governor Bulcão Viana cut the ribbon. He shouted “Long live Santa Catarina!” The echo multiplied through the rain.
In that moment, Florianópolis stopped being an island waiting for good weather.
What the Old Lady did before we existed
Before the bridge, a strong gust of wind would paralyze Florianópolis for days. The capital depended on ferries for any contact with the mainland. There was real — and constant — political pressure to move the seat of government to a city inland.
Florianópolis had 40,000 inhabitants. And an open question: would it truly be a capital?
The Hercílio Luz Bridge ended that debate once and for all — in action and 50,000 rivets.
It didn’t just connect the island to the mainland. It declared, in structure and concrete, that Florianópolis would be a capital — and what a capital it would be. The Estreito neighborhood grew where once there had been empty land. The historic center gained the flow it deserved. Families arrived by road, no longer by sea.
Every property that exists in Florianópolis today carries, in some way, the DNA of the Hercílio Luz Bridge.
But there was something that no one knew yet.
We were born in a city without the bridge
January 1982. An inspector climbs onto the structure, shines the flashlight at the wrong spot, and finds a 60-centimeter crack in one of the suspension bars. The same type of failure that had brought down the Silver Bridge in the United States in 1967 — killing 46 people in less than a minute.
The closure came the same day. In 1991, it became permanent.
Regente was founded in 1998. That year, the bridge had been closed for 7 years — with no prospect of reopening.
Florianópolis grew without it. We grew without it.
But the city that the bridge had built between 1926 and 1991 was exactly the city that shaped us. The consolidated neighborhoods, the calling to receive people from all over Brazil, the identity of a capital that doesn’t apologize for being on an island — all of this was its work.
For 21 years, we believed the Old Lady would return.
What the 2019 reopening meant for us
December 30, 2019. New Year’s Eve was approaching. Someone turned on the bridge’s lights.
We were in line. It wasn’t a metaphor — we were among the 200,000 people who took to the streets to see the bridge lit and open after nearly three decades.
No presentation. No show. Just the illuminated structure and an entire city standing still on the waterfront, gazing at something that had vanished from the living memory of many.
For those who work in Florianópolis’ real estate market for decades, the reopening was more than infrastructure. It was the return of an identity. Estreito, which was already thriving, gained new momentum. The center became even more connected. The entire city felt, for a moment, proud of what it had always known how to be.
The Old Lady returned — and she brought value with her, in the most literal and most symbolic sense that word has in the real estate market.
100 thank-yous, Old Lady
Thank you for existing before us.
For keeping Florianópolis as a capital when there were those who doubted it. For creating Estreito, giving the center the flow it deserved, and showing that infrastructure and identity are the same thing when a city has character.
For standing firm where others of the same design collapsed. The Silver Bridge fell in 1967. The Fort Steuben was demolished years later. You are the only one that remained standing — restored, new, and more respected than ever.
For being closed for 28 years without being destroyed. And for returning stronger.
And thank you for being the oldest argument we have that Florianópolis is not a destination by accident. It’s a destination by choice — of North American engineers with long-term vision, of a governor who died without seeing the work completed, of a city that always wanted to be more than an island.
We chose this city. It had already been chosen 100 years ago.
Congratulations, Old Lady. May the next 100 years be yours as well.
— Regente Imóveis Team, Florianópolis, May 13, 2026
