Today’s Zaman
03 January 2010, Sunday
PAT YALE °STANBUL
°stanbul’s forgotten art nouveau heritage
M±s±r Apartment Complex
As the curtain finally lifts on °stanbul’s year as a European Capital
of Culture, attention will be focused as never before on its
magnificent architectural heritage, much of it newly spruced up and
reopened to the public after long years in the doldrums.
Of course when people think of °stanbul, the buildings that
immediately leap to mind are those associated with the Byzantines
(Hagia Sophia, the Yerebatan Cistern) or the Ottomans (Topkap±
Palace, Sultanahmet Cami [the Blue Mosque], the Süleymaniye
complex). But as with most cities with long histories tailing them,
°stanbul is a palimpsest on which every generation has left its
mark. There’s something here from every era for those with the time
and inclination to hunt it out.
Take art nouveau, for example. This is a wonderful, flamboyant style
of turn-of-the-20th-century architecture most strongly associated in
its different forms with France, Germany, Austria, the Czech Republic
and Italy. But °stanbul too has its art nouveau legacy, much of it
concentrated in Beyo=9Flu, Sirkeci, Bebek, Arnavutköy and
Büyükada, but with the odd stray in Ã=87aml±ca, Tarabya, Yeniköy
and Ã=87ubuklu, too.
The best place to set out on an exploration of art nouveau in
°stanbul is the Galata/Tünel end of °stiklal Caddesi in what is now
Beyo=9Flu but was once Pera, the part of town where the ambassadors
and foreign merchants lived until the founding of the Turkish
Republic. Like most of °stanbul, Pera was originally furnished with
wooden houses, but a sequence of fires, most disastrously in 1870, led
to a decision that all new buildings should be in stone. It was this
more than anything else that threw open the doors for the modish
European style to infiltrate the area.
Architect Raimondo d’Aronco was first off the drawing board. Born in
Italy in 1857, d’Aronco arrived in °stanbul in 1893 to work on
designs for a planned °stanbul exhibition of agriculture and industry
that never materialized after a terrible earthquake struck the city in
1894. Fortunately, by then he’d caught the eye of Sultan Abdülhamid
II, who employed him to restore some of the damaged buildings. Between
1900 and 1901, he built a house for the sultan’s tailor, Jean Botter,
which was the city’s first art nouveau structure. Today it still
stands beside the Swedish Consulate, a soot-blackened, crumbling shell
of a building festooned with gorgeous stone roses, giant sphinx-like
heads and wonderful wrought ironwork that includes dramatic protruding
flowers. Inside, even the windows contain stained-glass roses,
although most are now cracked and filthy. It’s a crying shame that it
hasn’t been restored to its original splendor.
Not far from the Casa Botter is another suffering art nouveau gem. The
Markiz Pastanesi was a favorite meeting place for the late 19th
century chattering classes. It belonged to a man named Lebon who was
brother-in-law to the Levantine architect Alexander Vallaury, the man
responsible for the nearby Pera Palas Hotel. Today what was once a
stylish café with a whiff of Vienna about it has been turned into a
fast food café called the Yemek Kulübü. Pop inside for a cut-price
bowl of soup and you’ll be able to admire two wonderful ceramic panels
depicting spring and autumn that look as if they must be works of
Mucha but were in fact by the French ceramicist J.A. Arnoux.
A little further along °stiklal Caddesi is another forgotten art
nouveau gem: the interior of the Mudo Pera shop, which still retains
its original wooden cabinets and galleries. Keep heading along
°stiklal Caddesi towards the Galatasaray Lisesi (high school) and you
will pass on the right the vast M±s±r apartment block that houses on
its top floor the trendy 360 restaurant. This was designed by the
Armenian Hovsep Aznavuryan, one of only a handful of architects at
work at this time whose name is known to us. Although not pure art
nouveau, it still carries enough of its characteristics to warrant a
mention.
Once you know what you’re looking for, it’s not hard to spot the
classic features of nouveau °stanbul-style in the clusters of
stylized flowers carved on facades and the swirling, circular designs
on wrought-iron balconies, window grilles and metal doors. To modern
visitors, these look very attractive. However, at the time they were a
novelty that didn’t find approval with everyone. There were probably
as many complaints at the turn of the 20th century about the new
high-rise apartment blocks and their tiny interior spaces as there are
today about the even higher-rise concrete apartment blocks; and it
turns out that then, as now, many of the new stone buildings were
thrown up as investment properties by speculators who wanted to spend
as little as possible on them, hence the fact that the art nouveau
trimmings tend to be strictly façade-deep only.
Yet more fine examples of the style can be found in the narrow streets
running off °stiklal Caddesi, including the fine Ferah apartment
block at the junction of Mis and Kurabiye Sokaks. If you cut down
°skender Caddesi to Å=9EiÅ=9Fhane Meydan± (square), you will also be
able to inspect the elaborate Frej apartment block designed by the
Greek Konstantinos Kyriakidis, another of the rare architects whose
name has come down to us. Finally, for those who enjoy the quirky, a
stroll down Å=9Eair Ziya PaÅ=9Fa Caddesi behind the Galata Tower will
bring you to the Laleli Ã=87eÅ=9Fme (tulip fountain), the only art
nouveau fountain in the city and designed inevitably by d’Aronco.
There are yet more wonderful art nouveau apartment blocks to be found
on GümüÅ=9Fsuyu (°nönü) Caddesi as you stroll down toward the
BeÅ=9FiktaÅ=9F soccer stadium. These include the extraordinary
GümüÅ=9Fs uyu Palas, a vibrant, 3D extravaganza of a building. Almost
unbelievably, the name of the architect who created it is unknown.
To see some of the most impressive examples of art nouveau, you need
to venture a little further afield. Off Barbaros Bulvar± in
BeÅ=9FiktaÅ=9F, for example, you might like to look at d’Aronco’s
newly restored, one-off shrine to Å=9Eeyh Muhammed Zafir, the
spiritual advisor to Sultan Abdülhamid II, in which a library,
fountain and dervish lodge pool elements of art nouveau and Ottoman
revival architecture. Or you can head up the Bosporus to Bebek and
admire the art nouveau turrets on the enormous palace built for the
khedive of Egypt’s mother. Across the other side of the Bosporus, the
Hidiv Kasr± (Khedive’s Villa) at Ã=87ubuklu, with its distinctive
tower, doesn’t have any obvious external link with art
nouveau. Inside, however, it retains a period fountain as well as some
delightful tiles in the restrooms. Closer to Sultanahmet, you can
stand on the steps of the Büyük Postane (main post office) in
Sirkeci and admire the delightful Vlora Han filling the junction
between two streets and sadly blackened despite the lovely stone roses
that gamble across its façade.
Art nouveau is usually thought of as a style of architecture
appropriate to stone buildings, but Turkey, with its long tradition of
wooden houses, soon found a way to adapt it to local needs. Some of
the finest of all
°stanbul’s art nouveau buildings are those that line the waterfront
at Arnavutköy. Ironically these lovely houses that now look so
individual appear to have been built using ready-made window and
doorframes that could be fitted by local builders without the need for
expensive architects.
Nor is that the sum of it. In summer, no exploration of art nouveau
°stanbul would be complete without a boat ride out to Büyükada,
where, on Ã=87ankaya Caddesi, you will be able to pick out yet more
wonderful wooden carvings and wrought-iron balconies. Or you can head
up the Bosporus to Tarabya, where the summer residence of the Italian
Embassy was built in grand art nouveau style.
***
M±s±r Apartment
Vlora Han
Å=9Eeyh Zafir Shrine
Botter Apartment