GOIÂNIA, Brazil — On a recent visit to Goiânia, a bustling city noted for its sway in Brazil’s farm belt, I didn’t expect to stumble across Art Deco gems. But there they were, amid spacious parks, plazas and tree-lined avenues: a train station, a theater, a palace, some government buildings.

Yet that grandeur from the 1930s — when Goiânia was founded as an example of forward-looking cosmopolitanism in Brazil’s hinterland — has faded. Landmark buildings have been torn down to make way for nondescript towers, and graffiti envelops many structures.

Image Motorists pass a gazebo in Goiânia, which was founded as an outpost of cosmopolitanism in the 1930s. Credit... Simon Romero/The New York Times

Some Brazilians write off Goiânia, far from São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, as their version of Midwestern flyover country. But farming and ranching generates much of the country’s wealth and influences Brazilian culture these days, even if the region sometimes neglects its own complex and sophisticated history.