This dissertation investigates the process of urbanization that took place in Engenho de Dentro between 1870 and 1906. During this period, which beginning marks the implantation of the railway system of suburban trains, this locality, so far markedly rural, was incorporated into the urban network of the city as part of the suburban region that was claimed. For part of the historiography, such a process would be a direct result of the intervention and remodeling works of the central region of the city occurred in Rio de Janeiro in the early years of the twentieth century, in a perspective that emphasizes the role of the State in the definition of the distinctions and spatial hierarchies that mark the urban world of Rio. Problematizing such analyses, the objective of this work is to understand how the inhabitants of the place, in their diversity, were an active part of the transformation process and consolidation of that territory, from which they appropriated in several forms.