The year was 1956, and two of the founding fathers of bossa nova, Tom Jobim and Vinicius de Moraes, had just met at a Rio de Janeiro bar called the Casa Villarino.

The friendship that started that day would change the history of music, as the pianist and the poet helped reinvent Brazilian samba to give the world a silky-smoothe new genre that would come to define modernity and cool.

The meeting also sealed the Villarino's place in history. But 64 years on, the iconic bar and restaurant in the city center has closed, the latest victim of the coronavirus pandemic.

Rio's central business district has all but emptied as companies have switched to home office in Brazil, the country with the second-highest death toll in the pandemic, after the United States: nearly 180,000.

Social distancing measures have taken a heavy toll on the restaurants, bars and shops that catered to the now-vanished business set -- including the Villarino, which closed indefinitely on November 16.

A woman walks past the closed Casa Villarino, a famed bar that closed because of the coronavirus pandemic in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on December 08, 2020
A woman walks past the closed Casa Villarino, a famed bar that closed because of the coronavirus pandemic in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on December 08, 2020 AFP / MAURO PIMENTEL

"The city center is empty. It's like a ghost town," said owner Rita Nava, 79.

"We used to serve 80 to 100 meals a day on average. The day we closed, there was one customer."

Nava's late husband, Antonio Vazquez, was the last remaining member of a group of Spanish partners who had run the bar almost since its founding in 1953.

They turned it into a hangout for artists, intellectuals and politicians in the 1950s. The bar still has the mosaic tiles, marble tables and red-leather chairs from that era.

Regular clients in those days included Moraes, a diplomat and poet who used to jet into Rio's nearby Santos Dumont airport and immediately head to the Villarino to install himself at his favorite corner table.

It was there that he was introduced to the young pianist Antonio Carlos Jobim, whom he soon enlisted to score his work "Orfeu da Conceicao," the play that became the basis for the Oscar-winning film "Black Orpheus" (1959).

Picture taken on September 26, 2013 at Casa Villarino, the traditional bar in which the poet Vinicius de Moraes and musician Tom Jobim met and started a friendship that would change the world with Bossa Nova, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Picture taken on September 26, 2013 at Casa Villarino, the traditional bar in which the poet Vinicius de Moraes and musician Tom Jobim met and started a friendship that would change the world with Bossa Nova, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil AFP / Mauro PIMENTEL

The pair would collaborate on some of the greatest bossa nova hits of all time, including "The Girl from Ipanema," "A Felicidade" and "Eu Sei Que Vou Te Amar."

Back then, Rio was still Brazil's capital, not yet supplanted by Brasilia, the ultra-modernist planned city inaugurated in 1960.

Central Rio is still home to a huge number of historic buildings, though many have fallen into decay.

The district has been in failing health for decades, even before the pandemic. Buzzing with activity during business hours, it emptied on evenings and weekends except for homeless people and drug addicts.

Men walk past a wall of a closed bar with a grafitti of late Jamaican singer Bob Marley and former Brazilian footballer Pele hugging each other in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where many stores remain closed due to the coronavirus pandemic, on December 08, 202
Men walk past a wall of a closed bar with a grafitti of late Jamaican singer Bob Marley and former Brazilian footballer Pele hugging each other in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where many stores remain closed due to the coronavirus pandemic, on December 08, 2020. AFP / MAURO PIMENTEL

Since the pandemic, its streets are largely deserted even in the middle of working days.

"It was already a problem before. The pandemic has just accelerated things," said Claudio Hermolin, head of the Association of Real Estate Managers (ADEMI).

A recent report by the association identified 14,000 abandoned, empty or nearly unused properties in the city center, up from 8,000 before the pandemic.

Hermolin argues Rio needs to overhaul its zoning regulations to make it easier to convert business properties into residential ones and bring life back to the city center.

Brazil's second city tried to revitalize the center with a series of infrastructure projects when it hosted the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympics.

But it largely failed to attract major employers to the district.

Then-mayor Eduardo Paes (2008-2016), who won a new term in elections last month, promises to attract investment to save the "soul of the city" when he takes office again in January.

Small business owners hope he will deliver.

"The economy has stalled here. Offices closed, stores closed and those of us who are open aren't making ends meet," said newsstand owner Derisvaldo Pereira.

He closed shop for three months when the pandemic arrived, and says sales are down 60 percent since he reopened.

The Brazilian Bar and Restaurant Association says 30 percent of those businesses have closed nationwide since the new coronavirus arrived.

Nava hopes she will be able to reopen someday, and see the city center make a come-back.

"The culture of every city in the world is in the center. That's where everything starts," she said.

"We can't just leave it in oblivion."

Coronavirus