Tag: Industrial

Daily Picture 18-feb-10: The Restored Gothic Interior of Iasi Railway Station

Valentin Mandache
The freshly restored Gothic interior of Iasi railway station photographed in the summer of 2009. (©Valentin Mandache)

The city of Iasi is the beautiful historical capital of the principality of Moldavia, which through its union with Wallachia in 1859, in the favourable international circumstances following the Crimean War, formed the core of modern Romania. The city has been a bitter rival of Bucharest ever since, very much hampered in its development because of more difficult communication lines with the rest of the country. The railway came to the town in 1869 and alleviated in part that situation. The Iasi people had until that date to take uncomfortable horse drawn coaches in order to travel to Bucharest, through a very difficult 250 miles dirt road. The wealthier Iasi citizens even preferred to travel to Bucharest via Vienna, a huge detour, but a much more comfortable trip through Cernowitz in Bucovina, to the Austrian capital and from there to embark on a steam boat all the way down on the Danube to Giurgiu, nearby Bucharest. Consequently the train has a great importance for the Iasi people and the grandiose architecture of the local railway station, perhaps the most beautiful such building in Romania, reflects that sentiment. Its Venetian Gothic inspired architecture is very monumental and also well proportioned. Recently the station has been professionally restored with stunning results. I was amazed to admire its numerous ogee windows and arcades and the fresh majesty of its lines and airy interior; even the ticket counters are provided with ogee windows. I took the photograph above in the summer of last year, when the restoration work was on course, and I hope that it conveys at least in part my favourable impressions.

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I endeavor through this daily image series to inspire appreciation of the historic houses of Romania, a virtually undiscovered, but fascinating chapter of European architectural heritage.

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If you plan acquiring a historic property in Romania or start a renovation project, I would be delighted to advice you in locating the property, specialist research, planning permissions, restoration project management, etc. To discuss your particular plan please see my contact details in the Contact page of this weblog.

Neo-Romanian Shops and Flats Building

Valentin Mandache
A harmonious, reduced to essence design of a late 1920s Neo-Romanian style building, purpose built for use as shops on the ground level and residential apartments on the upper floor. The central gateway gives access to a small interior courtyard. Natiunile Unite area, Bucharest. (©Valentin Mandache)

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I endeavor through this daily image series to inspire appreciation of the historic houses of Romania, a virtually undiscovered, but fascinating chapter of European architectural heritage.

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If you plan acquiring a historic property in Romania or start a renovation project, I would be delighted to advice you in locating the property, specialist research, planning permissions, restoration project management, etc. To discuss your particular plan please see my contact details in the Contact page of this weblog.

Daily Picture 22-Dec-09: Early 20th Century Bucharest Industrial Architecture

Valentin Mandache
A quaint early 20th century piece of industrial heritage architecture of French design inspiration; a potential restoration/ renovation project. The Match Factory area, Bucharest. (©Valentin Mandache)

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I endeavor through this daily image series to inspire appreciation of the historic houses of Romania, a virtually undiscovered, but fascinating chapter of European architectural heritage.

***********************************************

If you plan acquiring a historic property in Romania or start a renovation project, I would be delighted to advice you in locating the property, specialist research, planning permissions, restoration project management, etc. To discuss your particular plan please see my contact details in the Contact page of this weblog.

Daily Picture 3-Dec-09: Spa Town Music Kiosk

Valentin Mandache
Art Nouveau style music kiosk in Slanic Moldova, a spa town in the Oriental Carpathian mountains, north-east Romania (1910s postcard, Valentin Mandache collection)

The Victorians from England to India had a penchant for spa towns. Romania, with its Carpathian mountains, a chain of over 1,000 km in length on its Romanian sector, one of the longest such landscape formations in Europe, is especially propitious for development of spa towns around the innumerable thermal or curative mineral water springs located within that Alpine environment. The development of the country on modern European lines under the efficient rule of the German origin King Carol I in the second part of the c19th saw the emergence of numerous spa towns in the Carpathians. The architecture was similar and typical of the age with examples from Central Europe or France and Belgium. Many of these buildings and facilities still survive today, albeit in a very run down state or on the verge of demolition, eyed by rapacious property developers. The image above shows the music kiosk from Slanic Moldova in the Oriental Carpathian mountains, displaying a serene atmosphere just before the Great War, a time of prosperity and well being in this country at the dusk of the Victorian epoch.

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I endeavor through this daily image series to inspire appreciation of the historic houses of Romania, a virtually undiscovered, but fascinating chapter of European architectural heritage.

***********************************************

If you plan acquiring a historic property in Romania or start a renovation project, I would be delighted to advice you in locating the property, specialist research, planning permissions, restoration project management, etc. To discuss your particular plan please see my contact details in the Contact page of this weblog.

Manor house – Conac

Valentin Mandache
Mixture of architectural styles, with an emphasis on the Neo-Romanian order, in a 1910s manor house from the Romanian province of Wallachia (©Valentin Mandache)

Romania has vast swathes of farming land, which were developed on a large scale starting with mid c19th once the Danube and the straits Bosphorus and Dardanelles waterways were freed from Ottoman control, allowing massive grain exports from the region to the industrial centres of Victorian Europe (see my article describing a Victorian barn from southern Romania built as part of that economic transformation). The local aristocrats and landowners administered their farms from impressive manors, called “conac” in Romanian, a word of Turkish origin (see a more extensive article about a typical such mansion: the Casota conac). The conacs were built in a variety of styles, according to the money available and the fashion of the period from French fin de siècle to Neo-Romanian and Art Deco. The interesting example in the image above boasts mainly a Neo-Romanian architecture, typical of 1910s with some French echoes, especially in the roof shape and ornaments. During the communist regime these manors were confiscated and transformed in collective farm headquarters. Many were badly damaged, especially in the last 20 years of regime change in Romania, characterised by imperfect property legislation concerning the returning of property to the rightful owners. Some conacs are now on the market, but due to the huge property bubble of the last few years in Romania and immature market mentality of local property owners, have inflated, unrealistic prices, in many instances several times more expensive than c18th French châteaux or similar period mansions from Italy.

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I endeavor through this daily image series to inspire appreciation of the historic houses of Romania, a virtually undiscovered, but fascinating chapter of European architectural heritage.

***********************************************

If you plan acquiring a historic property in Romania or start a renovation project, I would be delighted to advice you in locating the property, specialist research, planning permissions, restoration project management, etc. To discuss your particular plan please see my contact details in the Contactpage of this weblog.

The empty Shell of A Historic Building

Valentin Mandache
The interior shell of a historic building, Bucharest
The interior shell of a historic building, Lipscani area, Bucharest (©Valentin Mandache)

The photograph above was taken last February and, as I write, the building is more advanced in its construction. The developer intends to preserve the outer shell of the historic building, putting up an entire new structure in its interior. The image is, in my opinion, a text book representation of the initial stage of that process. The project represents one of the better facets of the recently passed property development boom in Romania’s capital, one that seeks to preserve certain features of the historic buildings. This example is unfortunately an extremely rare occurrence in a sea of bad taste among developers and a frenzy of destructive development projects and illegal demolition of heritage sites.

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I endeavor through this daily image series to inspire appreciation of the historic houses of Romania, a virtually undiscovered, but fascinating chapter of European architectural heritage.

***********************************************

If you plan acquiring a historic property in Romania or start a renovation project, I would be delighted to advice you in locating the property, specialist research, planning permissions, restoration project management, etc. To discuss your particular plan please see my contact details in the Contact page of this weblog.

Victorian barn: an interesting example from southern Romania

Valentin Mandache

Toward the end of the 19th century, Romania became one of the main European grain exporters, in close competition with the producers of Southern Russia (the Black Sea steppe). It was a direct result of the Crimean and the 1877-’78 Russian-Turkish wars that resulted in unencumbered international access to the waterways of the Danube, the Black Sea and the Bosporus straight, which opened again the trade routes of the region for first time since the Ottoman conquest, four centuries before.

The extraordinary demand from the industrialised countries of the Victorian Western Europe for large quantities of grains, made possible an unprecedented economic and cultural flourishing in Romania and from that period dates most of the picturesque French inspired architecture of Bucharest (what I call the “Little Paris” style) and of many other Romanian provincial towns.

The industrial architecture is another chapter of that development, seen today in the old barns that dot the countryside and the peculiar Victorian industrial buildings of the steam engine mills from the grain exporting ports on the Danube.

Peasants & crop transports waiting their turn to an industrial steam mill, 1899 Braila, Romania (Valentin Mandache collection)
Peasants with crop transports waiting their turn to an industrial steam mill, 1899 Braila, Romania (early postcard)

I found during my fieldwork an excellent example of a surviving 19thcentury barn in a village in Gorj county, south-western Romania.

Historic 19th century barn, Oltenia region (©Valentin Mandache)
Historic 19th century barn, Oltenia region (©Valentin Mandache)

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