Tag: Romanian Revival

Ornamental Neo-Romanian Style Roof Ridge Crests: Photomontage & Slide Show

Valentin Mandache
Ornamental Neo-Romanian style roof ridge crests - photomontage (©Valentin Mandache)

The Neo-Romanian architectural style is as a rule an ornate order with motifs imagined by the architects from the period between the late c19th and the interwar period, when this style was popular, as a coalescence of sources that during the previous centuries made an impact on the architecture and decorative art of the Romanian communities. These sources range from late Medieval Wallachian church architecture, peasant art to Ottoman Balkan ingredients and even old Venetian Renaissance style components. The roof is an important locus for unfurling that splendid and highly particular decorative panoply, where the most important constituents are the roof finials, the ornamental ridges, the tiles, the eaves, the drain pipes and the decorative elements embellishing the roof opening (air, vents, attic windows, etc.) The ridges are among the most spectacular such artifacts, just as flamboyant as the finials that accompany them on the very top of the roof, together crowning the building as an architectural apotheosis. They are meant to draw attention from a long distance and make an impression on the visitor. I wrote a post, a few months ago, about a particular example of roof ridge (click here for access) and detailed its filiation from equivalent ornaments found on peasant dwellings and some old Wallachian churches. I have gathered, during my fieldwork, a small collection of photographs of such beautiful ornaments, and put together a representative sample for your edification in the form of the above photomontage. Those images can also be seen in greater detail in the slide show bellow. I like how these ornaments convey in a concentrated space a great deal from the very nature and personality of this remarkable national-romantic era architectural style, peculiar to Romania.

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I endeavor through this series of daily articles 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 sourcing 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.

Art Nouveau Outlines in A Neo-Romanian Style Doorway Assembly

Valentin Mandache
Art Nouveau echoes in a late 1920s Neo-Romanian style doorway assembly, Cotroceni area, Bucharest. (©Valentin Mandache)

The Neo-Romanian architectural style emerged at the end of c19th together with other European national romantic movements in visual arts that saw the emergence of national architectural styles in countries spanning from Scandinavia to the Balkans. These styles were initially an expression of the internationalist Art Nouveau experiments of the time, taking inspiration from the local national traditions. Particular for Romania was that this Art Nouveau ambiance and character was still in use in many instances in the local architecture until the late 1920s and even in some cases in the 1930s, long after the twilight of the Art Nouveau and other national romantic styles elsewhere in Europe. The image above shows one such telling example of powerful Art Nouveau echoes in a late 1920s Neo-Romanian style doorway assembly that still preserves very prominent Fin de Siècle national-romantic forms (short Byzantine type columns, oversized decorations inspired from medieval Wallachian church architecture, the red paint as an allusion to the Pompeian Red colour and through that to the ancient Roman/ Latin origins of the Romanian people, etc).

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I endeavor through this daily series of daily articles 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 sourcing 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 Style Garage

Valentin Mandache
Late 1920s Neo-Romanian style garage - fire station, Victoriei area, Bucharest. (©Valentin Mandache)

During its heydays in the inter-war period, the Neo-Romanian architectural style has been applied to most types of buildings from domestic, commercial, civic to industrial and military. The image above shows an imposing garage, a rare category of Neo-Romanian industrial architecture, which I located last winter in the Victoriei area of Bucharest. The design is characteristic of the late 1920s Neo-Romanian style types. That was a period when more modern and slender design patterns started to be employed by the local architects, as a consequence of the wider availability after the Great War of modern construction materials and techniques, such as steel, reinforced concrete or sizeable glass surfaces. I like the citadel aspect of the building, a hallmark of the Neo-Romanian style and its division into a ground-floor garage/ workshop area, offices on the first floor and probably living quarters on the second floor. The presence of probable living quarters makes me consider that the building initial destination might have been that of a fire station and only later turned into a standard garage. The edifice today is the property of the Romanian National TV, a state company, as seen from the logo painted on the main doors, a fact which probably saved it from the hands of the rapacious property developers that have ravaged the historic architecture of the surrounding area during the boom of the last decade, with the complicit approval of the usually corrupt city authorities.

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I endeavor through this daily series of daily articles 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 sourcing 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.

Semicircular Neoromanian Style Window from the 1920s

Valentin Mandache
Neo-Romanian style semicircular window adorning a mid-1920s house in the Cotroceni area of Bucharest. (©Valentin Mandache)

The semicircular shape of the Neo-Romanian style window depicted in the photograph above, together with its adorable wood frame carvings and multicoloured stained glass design, betray the Art Nouveau connections of this architectural order. The Neo-Romanian style is a national romantic artistic expression in architecture that emerged in this country at the end of c19th and resolutely conserved its Art Nouveau-like decorative register well after the dawn of this movement, as this mid-1920s window abundantly confirms that fact.

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

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

If you plan acquiring a historic property in Romania or start a renovation project, I would be delighted to advice you in sourcing 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.

Neoromanian Style Chimney Stacks

Valentin Mandache
Neo-Romanian style chimney stacks adorning a mid-1920s house in Dorobanti area, Bucharest. (©Valentin Mandache)

Most of the Neo-Romanian style houses and palaces were built before the gas central heating era and had to be provided with classic stove and fireplace installations designed for wood, or in rarer instances coal, burning. Therefore, the chimney stack is a very visible element within the edifice assembly and there are examples in Bucharest of spectacular chimneys designed in specific Neo-Romanian shapes. The photograph above shows three such house artefacts, which although are somehow more modest in size and decoration, nevertheless are very suggestive for the Neo-Romanian style applied for chimney design. The main architectural source of inspiration seems to be the old Ottoman kitchen chimney examples that between c17th and late c19th embellished the aristocratic houses and mansions of Bucharest and southern Romania.

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

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

If you plan acquiring a historic property in Romania or start a renovation project, I would be delighted to advice you in sourcing 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 Ethnographic Verandas

Valentin Mandache
Neo-Romanian ethnographic wooden verandas photomontage; examples dating mainly from 1920s, Bucharest (©Valentin Mandache)

A main source of inspiration for the Neo-Romanian architectural style is the rich ethnographic art of the Romanian peasants. The geometric pattern wood carvings that adorn the peasant houses in the vast Romanian countryside are some of the most exquisite expressions of this art. The trend to include these decorative elements in the urban setting of the Neo-Romanian started in the early part of the inter-war period as a vivacious Arts and Crafts current inspired from the abundant local sources. It was promoted by many architects, such as the remarkable Henriette Delavrancea-Gibory. The six examples of verandas, which I selected for the photomontage presented here (see also the slide show bellow), is just a small sample from the multitude of such artefacts adorning the Neo-Romanian houses of Bucharest.

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

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

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

If you plan acquiring a historic property in Romania or start a renovation project, I would be delighted to advice you in sourcing 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.

The NEO-ROMANIAN ARCHITECTURAL STYLE: a brief guide on its origins and features

The NEO-ROMANIAN ARCHITECTURAL STYLE: a brief guide on its origins and features

Valentin Mandache

The neo-Romanian architectural style is one of the most original and strikingly beautiful orders that emerged in Europe during the intensely creative years of late Victorian-era. The Romanians of that period wanted to create a style that would reflect the glories of their medieval past in the transforming architectural landscape of their country, just as the British created decades earlier at a larger scale the better-known Victorian neo-Gothic architectural style.

It represents an interesting blend between eastern Byzantine elements together with local peasant architectural and ethnographic motifs, also particular patterns of Ottoman art and even late Italian Renaissance themes. The style began to be in vogue among the well-to-do Romanians with the first years of the 20th century in pre-WWI Romania, area known as the Old Kingdom, and spread also within Transylvania after the World War One once the province became part of Romania.

A typical neo-Romanian style property looks on lines similar with the following example,

Calea Calarasi, Bucharest
Calea Calarasi, Bucharest

Here one can clearly detect the Byzantine architectural elements (i.e. short arches, thick and short columns, etc.) and the heavy, citadel-like aspect of the building, that all together represents a Romantic architectural metaphor intended by its creators to express the heroic resistance put by Romanians during medieval times as a Christian people against the relentless advance of the Ottoman Empire.

A neo-Romanian style house today is a valuable piece of property and a restoration project would be an extremely interesting and challenging, but rewarding endeavour.

The style reached its zenith during the inter-war period, with an abrupt end after the communist takeover in Romania in 1948. It has somehow been revived during the construction boom of the last decade, but in a minimalist modernist fashion, without the eclectic motifs and grandeur characteristic of the inter-war period.

I assembled here a few images from my postcard and photography collection, which together with short explanations would hopefully help you better appreciate the origins, characteristics, importance and value in artistic and period property market terms of this sophisticated architectural style peculiar to Romania.

Romanians are at their origins a nation of peasant farmers and shepherds. Their dwellings had basic decorations that were mainly ethnographic symbols characteristic to ancient aboriginal European communities that survived in less accessible areas of the continent (for example the Romanian ethnography has many motifs strikingly similar to the Celtic Irish, Pyrenees or Caucasian mountains communities). The house usually served immediate and very practical concerns for a people having to scrap a living in a harsh environment. A typical poor peasant dwelling form the region of the southern plains looked like in the illustration bellow, taken sometime at the end of 19th century.

Ancestral type peasant dwelling
Ancestral type peasant dwelling

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