Da Rocha's Lagos Water House

Let's call it Lagos Island’s Historic Brazilian-Style Landmark and we will still be on point and in order.
A Living Monument of Afro-Brazilian Lagos.
At the junction of Kakawa Street and Candido Da Rocha Street on Lagos Island stands The Water House, one of the most striking survivors of the city’s 19th-century Afro-Brazilian heritage. This grand residence, built in the 1880s–1890s, embodies the architectural and cultural imprint of the Aguda—formerly enslaved Africans who returned from Brazil to West Africa after emancipation and helped shape Lagos into a cosmopolitan port city.
Origins and Architectural Style
The Water House is a textbook example of Bahia-influenced Brazilian architecture transplanted to West Africa. Its stuccoed façade, arched windows, intricate wrought-iron balconies, and ornamental columns reflect the design vocabulary brought back by the Aguda. These returnees blended European and Yoruba building traditions, giving Lagos Island a distinctive skyline that still speaks of 19th-century global exchanges across the Atlantic.

Chief Candido Joao Da Rocha: Visionary Owner
The mansion was the home of Chief Candido Joao Da Rocha (1860–1959), one of Lagos’s most influential entrepreneurs and philanthropists. Son of Joao Esan Da Rocha, a Yoruba man who had lived in Brazil before resettling in Lagos, Candido inherited both the transatlantic legacy and the business acumen of the Aguda community.

By the early 20th century he had become one of the wealthiest Lagosians, investing in real estate, hospitality, and—most famously—water distribution. Holder of the Olotu of Lagos chieftaincy title, Da Rocha was known for his integrity and for ventures that combined private enterprise with civic benefit.

Lagos’s First Borehole and Water Supply Business
The house earned its name because Da Rocha sank what is widely regarded as the first borehole on Lagos Island, creating a reliable source of clean drinking water at a time when access was limited. Residents could purchase water drawn from the borehole—a private, profit-making venture that nonetheless provided a crucial public service.
While some accounts also mention an ornamental fountain, the documented milestone is the borehole and organized water distribution, which many historians view as the forerunner of modern water supply in Lagos.

Cultural and Literary Significance
Beyond its practical role, the Water House has become a symbol of Lagos’s layered identity. The Brazilian-Nigerian novelist Antonio Olinto immortalized it in his 1986 novel The Water House (Heinemann African Writers Series), using the mansion as a metaphor for the returnee experience, migration, and the interplay of Yoruba and Brazilian worlds.
Preservation and Continuing Heritage
Today the Water House is recognized by the National Commission for Museums andf Monuments (NCMM) as a protected heritage site. Yet like many historic buildings on Lagos Island, it has suffered periods of neglect and undergone repairs, a reminder of the challenges of preserving 19th-century architecture in a rapidly modernizing city.

Heritage advocates continue to champion its maintenance as an educational resource and a tangible link to Lagos’s Afro-Brazilian past, ensuring that the story of Candido Da Rocha and the Aguda community remains central to the city’s history.

BOOK YOUR FLIGHTS AT WALLET FRIENDLY PRICES AT Travelstart