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Built by Comendador Antônio José de Pinho, this residence presented a major change to the standards that, for almost three centuries, dominated Cidade Velha, the neighborhood where Belém's urbanization began in 1616. The neighborhood had maintained the colonial structure of ground-level or two-story houses, aligned in narrow streets, and where the scarce vegetation was restricted to largos in front of churches. Palacete Pinho innovated in its structure as a building with two floors and a basement, with a higher and receded central body.

Its façades are covered with tiles, like almost all stately homes of the time. This residence, whose restoration has been suspended for years, was the stage of intense social and political activity, standing out for the luxury and sumptuousness of its parties. A certain liberty in the façade's design heralds the advent of Eclecticism. Its composition in full arches with straight lintels or in basket-handle arches, the iron balconies, fitted to the wall or slightly projected, and the tiled coping can be found in Colonial or Imperial constructions, but, in this case, there is the addition of a wooden lambrequin. Tiles were no longer Portuguese, but rather German, from the famous factory Ville Roy & Boch, and there was a high basement with openings in the shape of oculi - solutions that were unprecedented in the neighborhood, and had just recently appeared elsewhere in the city. The building recedes forming a garden with ornamental railings and columns topped by decorative vases.

Its floor plan favored great halls, and almost all rooms had excellent wall paintings. It is curious that this building included a private chapel, more common at the time in rural residences.

The restoration, although unfinished, did recover a few details of decoration. Among them are internal decorative paintings of a rare delicacy. From a chromatic and compositional point of view, the tiles on the façade are some of the finest of the time, and there are only two other exemplars of them in the city, both in a precarious state of conservation.

In the 1970s, Palacete Pinho was already at an advanced stage of decadence, when an auction deprived it of all internal decoration, furniture, light fixtures and even the copings, doors and hardware. Because of a judicial dispute, the building was closed for years, and a restoration was in the 80's but now it is closed. 

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