Casa do Barão is a mansion located on the corner of Bocaiúva and Othon Gama D`Eça streets, in downtown Florianópolis. With a unique architecture, its facade has openings in Gothic arches, a turret, columns, worked lambrequins and railings with art nouveau elements. In the gardens, a beautiful lawn and many palm trees. The date of its construction is imprecise, but the maps prepared by the Viscount of Taunai, around 1886, already represented the property in Praia de Fora. Regarding the first owners, there are two versions. One account that the property first belonged to the Livramento family and the other, more accepted, that the property first belonged to Fernando Hackradt Júnior, an eminent merchant and local politician. Later, Hackradt sold it to the Scheele family, whose heiress, Edla Scheele, on January 2, 1931, married Dietrich Freiher von Wangenheim. Dietrich was a German immigrant who came to Brazil to work in the companies of his uncle, the famous local businessman Carl Hoepcke Junior. As in Germany he had the noble title of Free Citizen and this title had no correspondence in the Brazilian nobility, he was then adapted to the closest one - Baron. Due to the difficulty in pronouncing the name of the illustrious new resident, the locals began to refer to the property as Casa do Barão. In 1938, with the death of Carl Hoepke's last male heir, Baron Dietrich assumed the position of Chief Executive Officer of the Hoepke Shipping Company. It was during this period that the mansion opened its doors to numerous parties and receptions that social status demanded. However, soon after, with the beginning of the Second World War, groups against the Nazis, summoned by the authorities or by institutions such as the National Defense League, took to the streets in Florianópolis demanding revenge. The maddened crowd threw stones at the windows, invaded and vandalized the homes of Germans and their descendants. Casa do Barão was one of those residences that had its dependencies invaded and looted. The sturdy iron gate was brought down and the ground floor invaded, with many of its furniture and decorations having been stolen and broken. To prevent his family from being attacked, Baron Dietrich took refuge on the second floor of the house, spending most of the night there until the vandals dispersed. After years of neglect, in the second half of the 1980s, Casa do Barão was bought by businessman Roland Peters, from Balneário Camboriú, with the intention of building a hotel there. But, soon after, the building was listed by SPHAM - Service of Historical, Artistic and Natural Heritage of the Municipality. In 1989, an engineering project, combining, in the same physical space, the house and a business center, was approved by the City Hall and the complex was built, changing its name to the Casa do Barão Executive Center.
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