Art Deco style school

I continue here the series of posts dealing with the historic architecture of the city of Ploiesti, the major oil extraction and refining centre of Romania. Today I would like to present a remarkable Art Deco style school building, dating probably from the second part of the 1930s, located on Republicii Boulevard, just across the street from the Art Deco era tram, which I documented in a post published yesterday. The school is named “St. Basil Gymnasium” (“Colegiul Sfantul Vasile”), presenting a symmetrical street façade, where the rule of three is noticeable in the window partitions at its centre. The building features a number of interesting Art Deco elements, seen in the following photographs, comprising details such as well designed doorways for boys (“baieti”) and girsl (“fete”) to a nicely preserved 1930s clock. I will let the photographs to speak for themselves and hope that you would enjoy this short visual Art Deco in this corner of south east Europe.

Art Deco style school, Ploiesti (©Valentin Mandache)

Art Deco style school, entrance for girls, Ploiesti (©Valentin Mandache)

Art Deco style school, detail of the doorway ironwork featuring the Greek key motif, a suggestion that the school is envisaged as a "temple of learning", Ploiesti (©Valentin Mandache)

Art Deco style school, entrance for boys, Ploiesti (©Valentin Mandache)

Art Deco style school, detail of the doorway wall opening decoration, Ploiesti (©Valentin Mandache)

Art Deco style school, detail of the doorway for boys pediment, Ploiesti (©Valentin Mandache)

Art Deco style school, detail of the doorway for girls pediment, Ploiesti (©Valentin Mandache)

Art Deco style school, detail of the letter architectural rendering used for doorway inscriptions, Ploiesti (©Valentin Mandache)

Art Deco style school, close up of the late 1930s, made in Germany clock, Ploiesti (©Valentin Mandache)

Art Deco style school, details of the side façade and doorway, Ploiesti (©Valentin Mandache)

Art Deco style school, Ploiesti (©Valentin Mandache)

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

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

Oct 11 2011

Art Deco era streetcar

Art Deco era streetcar, Michael the Brave Park, Ploiesti (©Valentin Mandache)

The streetcar in the above photograph is a transport history exhibit placed in Michael the Brave Park in Ploiesti, the major oil production and refining centre of Romania. It dates from the 1930s, a time when the Art Deco architecture was highly fashionable there, along with the Neo-Romanian style. Ploiesti boasts the largest, in my opinion, Art Deco style building in the south east Europe: the Central Market Halls, designed in the first part of the 1930s by the great architect Toma T Socolescu, a native of the area, and also a multitude of other such wonderful edifices, such as the house which I documented in this blog article. The tram seen here, with its fine and simple outlines, also reminds of the Art Deco fashions found besides architecture, in a multitude of domains such as industrial machinery or jewellery design.

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Oct 8 2011

Art Deco lightwell

Art Deco lightwell, mid 1930s apartment block, Dacia area, Bucharest (©Valentin Mandache)

This is a photograph taken during last Sunday’s architectural tour in Dacia area of Bucharest. It is the lightwell of pleasing to the eye proportions, of a modest apartment block dating from the Art Deco era. I like the contrast between its quite stern grey outlines and the blue of the sky, giving the impression of a time window, making a link between the Bucharest of eight decades ago and nowadays.

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Sep 19 2011

Mondrian like Art Deco – Modernist hallway floor patterns

Art Deco ceramic tile hallway floor patterns, Bucharest

Art Deco - Modernist ceramic tile hallway floor patterns in a flat from a late 1930s apartment block, Magheru area, Bucharest (©Valentin Mandache)

I recently had the opportunity to view a flat in a well designed Art Deco – Modernist style apartment block in central Bucharest, dating from the last years of the 1930s. I have been “blown away” by the exquisite ceramic tile (3 x 3cm squares) patterns that embellish the entrance original hallway floor, a fragment of which is shown in the above photograph, which also reminded me of Piet Mondrian‘s paintings of that era. That is in my opinion a first class modernist design, comparable in many aspects with another ceramic tile pattern arrangement, which I documented some time ago (article at this link). It represents an eloquent proof about the quality of the interior design and architecture in general, produced in Bucharest some eight decade ago.

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Aug 30 2011

Art Deco garage door masterpiece

I discovered during the last Sunday architectural history and photography tour in Calea Calarasi area of Bucharest a tantalizingly beautiful Art Deco style garage doorway, presented in the photographs bellow (the same image processed in three different sequences in order to better outline various parts of its delicate design). I am very impressed by its quality and excellent proportions that please the eye, and also by its good state of preservation. The design reminds me of paintings typical of the Bauhaus school, something like a cross between Mondrian and Paul Klee. The theme is a 1930s era factory with clerestory roof windows (the sawtooth-like elements), chimney stacks from which smoke billows out, clouds and Suns in different positions, at dawn- on the left, midday- in the centre and dusk- on the right, signifying a working day at the factory. The wall surrounding the door opening also contains a similar theme Art Deco design, which unfortunately is now quite obscured by a layer of whitewash. On the whole, I believe, this garage door is quite an work of art and a testimony of the quality of Bucharest’s Art Deco era architecture.

Art Deco garage door, Calea Calarasi area, Bucharest (©Valentin Mandache)

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Aug 17 2011

Domenii – Casa Scanteii area: images from last Sunday’s architectural history & photo tour

Domenii - Casa Scanteii area Sunday architectual tour (©Valentin Mandache)

We had, last Sunday in the Domenii – Casa Scanteii area of Bucharest, an extensive and in my view mind-blowing viewing and examination of two major genres of 1930s architecture: Art Deco and “Stalinist Gothic”. Again, I was very fortunate to have enthusiastic and well informed participants from a variety of backgrounds. Domenii quarter has been developed mainly in the 1930s and ’40s and hosts a myriad of equisite Art Deco and peerless Neo-Romanian – Art Deco amalgam style dwellings, built for the inter-war Bucharest’s elite. Nowadays the area is in a rapid process of being taken over by the new class of post-communist Romanian moneyed people who unfortunately are not cultured or sophisticated enough to understand the importance of conserving that heritage and, as a result, a large part of those buildings were demolished, replaced with characterless massive new structures or in the best case aggressively renovated. Casa Scanteii – the former headquarters of the communist central press, located close by Domenii quarter, is the second largest building of this country, second after Ceausescu’s enormous House of the People, itself one of the largest in the world. It was designed by a group of architects led by Horia Maicu and built in 1950 – 51, following the model of the 1930s Muscovite buildings known as the “seven sisters”, a species of grandiose communist era Art Deco style structures erected in the 1930s Stalinist Soviet Union. The building was intended to stamp on the Soviet domination of Romania and herald the dawn of a new era and society in this corner of the world. While Casa Scanteii looks from afar similar with its Soviet counterparts, at a closer examination its architectural details are very indigenous- inspired from the late medieval Wallachian church architecture (Brancovan style) and using a multitude of Neo-Romanian style motifs. Even its monumental doorways look like a Wallachian church entrance. These absolutely particular aspects of this Stalinist era building, which are today forgotten by the locals specialists and laypersons alike, were closely examined and discussed by the participants at the tour. I trust that those who took part in the tour had thus a fulfilling cultural Sunday out and now are the privileged keepers of some of the most interesting and esoteric architectural history information about this corner of Bucharest!

Domenii - Casa Scanteii area architectural tour

!!! The next Sunday (21 August ’11) architectural history and photography tour will take place in Campina and Comarnic, OUTSIDE Bucharest, on the Prahova Valley (1h 15min hour by train), see a map at this link; meeting point: Gara de Nord train station, in front of McDonald’s restaurant, inside the station. I look forward to seeing you there !!!

Valentin Mandache, expert in Romania’s historic houses

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Aug 12 2011

Road utilities and Art Deco style house

During the “roaring ’20s” and in the second part of the 1930s, after the Great Depression, Bucharest went through a process of rapid urban. That was the period when the first proper urban development masterplan of the city was elaborated and approved, which in large part is still followed today. The architecture of the new dwellings and public edifices erected in those years was usually Art Deco and Neo-Romanian.

I found in one of my field day in Kiseleff area an interesting side street developed in that period, where I was able to discern its evolution, from first having in place the road utilities, followed in the subsequent years by houses built on plots lining up the road. The photograph bellow shows a canal lid dating from 1927, inscribed with the name of Bucharest’s sewerage works board and produced by a factory in Sibiu, Transylvania, the new province of then Romania acquired after the Great War. That indicates with a fair degree of accuracy the period when the road was built and its utilities infrastructure put in place.

Road infrastructure and Art Deco style house, Bucharest

Road infrastructure and Art Deco style house, Kiseleff area, Bucharest (©Valentin Mandache)

The year on the canal lid corresponds with the beginnings of the Art Deco era architecture in Bucharest, a style clearly reflected in that of many houses built in subsequent stages on that road, as is the interesting example shown in the following photographs.

Road infrastructure and Art Deco style house, Kiseleff area, Bucharest (©Valentin Mandache)

This ample Art Deco style house was probably built roundabout the year 1930, judging by it typology, building technology and type of ornaments.

Road infrastructure and Art Deco style house, Kiseleff area, Bucharest (©Valentin Mandache)

The house is embellished with a beautiful Art Deco panel containing luxuriant flowers and vegetation, sunburst and rainbow motifs. I like how the rainbows are marked by thunderbolts, suggesting the storms of the southern seas, a world that enthralled the Romanians of that era, dwellers of a latitude with harsh, Siberia-like, winters.

Road infrastructure and Art Deco style house, Kiseleff area, Bucharest (©Valentin Mandache)

The house also boasts a beautiful ethnographic solar eight ray disc, inspired from the Neo-Romanian architecture, rendered in this case in an alluring Art Deco manner.

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Aug 1 2011

Art Deco style villa name panel

Art Deco style villa name panel, early 1930s house, Aviatorilor area, Bucharest (©Valentin Mandache)

I photographed the above panel in the low luminosity of twilight, which gave it a soft appearance. It indicates the name of a Bucharest inter-war villa, “Vila Marioara” (“Little Mary Villa”) in an interesting lettering style, with letters linked together on a background of “Southern Seas” flowery vegetation, very popular in Art Deco architectural representations of the 1930s Bucharest.

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Jul 22 2011

Art Deco staircase tower window

Art Deco staircase tower window, mid-1930s house, Matei Basarb area, Bucharest (©Valentin Mandache)

I like the svelte lines of this staircase tower window from an Art Deco house in east-central Bucharest, which is excellently preserved despite the inauspicious conditions that prevailed in the country ever since the beginning of the WWII. Its quite austere lines remind me of the high tech factories of that era (e.g. automobile or aircraft industry), a main source of inspiration for the Art Deco style.

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Jul 15 2011

Wrought iron gate with cubist pattern

Bellow is a fascinating cubist-like design embellishing a wrought iron gate structure, which I encountered in Cotroceni quarter of Bucharest and have also shown to the participants at my architectural history tour, which took place in June past. It is another testimonial of the effervescent creative years of Bucharest that span the inter-war period, considered as a golden age for this city. The gate is in a run down state and needs urgent caring attention, but I doubt that it would ever receive any attention from the contemporary Bucharest people, having in fact a much higher chance to reach the scrapyard and be replaced by a new and “beautiful”, in their uncouth eyes, production line gate from a DIY shop.

Wrought iron gate with cubist pattern, Art Deco style house dating from the mid-1930s, Cotroceni area, Bucharest (©Valentin Mandache)

Inversed colour filter: wrought iron gate with cubist pattern, Art Deco style house dating from the mid-1930s, Cotroceni area, Bucharest (©Valentin Mandache)

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Jun 29 2011

Ancient Egyptian symbolism in an Art Deco panel

Art Deco bas-relief panel with ancient Egyptian theme , Bucharest

Art Deco bas-relief panel displaying ancient Egyptian symbolism, mid-1930s apartment house, designed by architect Georges Cristinel, Cismigiu area, Bucharest (©Valentin Mandache)

This is a photograph that I shot during last Sunday’s architectural history and photography tour in Cismigiu area of Bucharest. It is an ample bas-relief panel of about 1.2 x 1.6 m containing a theme that makes allusion to ancient Egyptian symbolisms. It adorns the top of the staircase tower of a streamline Art Deco style building designed by the architect Georges Cristinel in the second part of the 1930s. The panel probably depicts a vigorous and vitalist looking family at work (a reference to the “pure” and hard working Romanian family): father, mother and son (the personage with the ancient Egyptian style wig from the lower part). They are engaged in something that looks like building work on a pharaonic scale (signifying the engineering of a highly civilized nation, just as the old Egyptians were), blessed by sunrays bursting from the panel’s upper left hand corner. The three personages, their number is probably another reference to the ancient Egyptian symbolism, namely to the rule of three, characteristic of the Art Deco style, wear cloth in the “Pharaoh” manner, loosely trimmed around their waist. In my opinion this panel, through its hints at racial and civilizational purity, is a “Work and Joy” theme, a late 1930s fascist propaganda programme promoted by the Romanian authorities of that era, inspired from similar developments taking place in Nazi Germany or Fascist Italy, countries with political regimes that by then, in the immediate years before the Second World War, had a huge and unsavoury influence over Romania.

The next Sunday (3 July ’11, 9am-12.00) architectural history and photography tour will take place inFoisorul de Foc (Fire Watchtower) quarter, east-central Bucharest (see a map at this link); meeting point: in front of the Greek Church (the one like an ancient Greek temple from Pache Protopopescu square). I look forward to seeing you there!

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Jun 27 2011

Art Deco style semi-detached houses in Ploiesti

I would like to present you another magnificent period building photographed during my trip last week to Ploiesti, the oil town 60km north of Bucharest. The previous house I wrote about was a La Belle Époque period Little Paris town mansion; that article can be read at this link. This one is a well designed mid-1930s Art Deco example of semi-detached houses, which has an extraordinary personality. The edifice is located on Independentei Street, not far from the city’s main train station. It had escaped, by a miracle in my opinion, the epic 1943 American Air Forces bomber attack that devastated the area, which although was aimed at the destruction of the oil refining industry from around Ploiesti, many stray bombs fell on the city itself. That operation against those oil fields that in the Second World War supplied the German war machine, is known in the military annals as Operation Tidal Wave, one the costliest actions in terms of pilot and aircraft losses of the US Air Forces in Europe.

The main feature of the building is embodied by its monumental twin staircase towers around which a multitude of Art Deco design elements get unfurled, from extraordinarily attractive doorways, streamline-like balconies with eyebrow awnings, a well proportioned street fence or ample rooftop verandas.

One of the doorways embellishing the Art Deco style semi-detached houses dating from the mid-1930s, Ploiesti (©Valentin Mandache)

The door displays sunbursts among motifs that look like clouds, while the doorway opening is decorated with a “fleshy” Art Deco floral motif, in the manner of the local Brancovan and Neo-Romanian styles, which reminds me of some of architect’s Toma T. Socolescu‘s designs. He was extremelly influential in Ploiesti and Prahova county during the inter-war period and there could be a possibility that he might be the designer of this building too.

The twin staircase towers are embellished with a ziggurat motif, very characteristic of the Art Deco style.

The structure, through its wonderful proportions and high design qualities, stands out among the built landscape surrounding it. I hope that the current renovation works, which seem to take place, would bring something back from its former glory.

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May 10 2011

Art Deco entertainment

The second part of the 1930s were a prosperous period for Romania and Bucharest in particular, the country benefiting from its status as a large oil exporter. The architectural skyline of the capital was rapidly evolving, with many Art Deco and modernist style buildings springing up in its central areas or new quarters developed for the skilled labour force employed in the dynamic new industries of the post-depression era. The artistic scene was also extremely vibrant and international in its outlook, with art galleries, theatres or cabarets exhibiting or playing works, which could well have been at home in many places from the then developed world. The music sheet cover presented bellow is an instance of that exuberant Bucharest atmosphere of eight decades ago, with its design and bold lettering very much in the spirit of the Art Deco style. The title translates as “Give me a dub [= "pol", slang for a twenty lei (local currency) bill]“, an amount which was usually lent among friends and expected to be never returned, paying for a drink in a cabaret. The music, “rumba”, printed on this sheet was in the review theatre genre, performed as is mentioned there “with enormous success” at the Stroe & Vasilache theatre. What drew my attention, is the name of the composer and libretto writers, which were artists from the Jewish community of Bucharest, a testimony of the cosmopolitan and happy atmosphere of the Art Deco era in this corner of south east Europe.

Art Deco era music sheet cover, Bucharest (Arch. Madalin Ghigeanu collection)

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May 5 2011

Bucharest period doorways

Bellow are three examples of Bucharest doorways in styles that characterise most of the historic architecture of Romania’s capital. The first photograph immediately under the text is in what I call the Little Paris style, an architecture popular during the La Belle Époque era (corresponding with the late Victorian and Edwardian periods), which was inspired on the whole from the French c19th historicist styles very fashionable in Romania of that time. The second photograph presents a Neo-Romanian style doorway, a national-romantic architectural order peculiar to this country that reached its apogee in the 1920s, the decade following the Great War from which Romania emerged victorious with a heightened sense of national pride. The third image shows an Art Deco style doorway from the mid-1930s, a period when this international style became an architectural hallmark of Bucharest, which embellished the city with countless private and public edifices that still delight its contemporary visitors.

I like in the above example the pair of eye-holes piercing the main panels of each of the doors, used to identify the visitors of more than a century ago.

The main feature of this Neo-Romanian doorway is its ample awning inspired from that adorning entrances of late medieval Wallachian. The two jardiniers flanking the door are of great visual effect and are embellished with intricate Neo-Romanian motifs.

This is a quite an elaborate Art Deco doorway assembly with an ample pediment and two beautiful jardinieres in the same style (a rarity for Bucharest) flanking the entrance on top of the access stair balustrades. I very much like the two wall lamps encastred into the pediment, embellished with stained glasses.

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Apr 27 2011

Art Deco “ocean liner” façade

The Art Deco style house presented bellow dates from the early 1930s and is an interesting rendering of the ocean liner theme within its generous street façade. The ocean liner allusions are seen in the upper row of three porthole windows or the semicircular round profile, boat stern like, of the stairs tower on the left hand side of the building, crowned by an upper deck like veranda, next to a prominent chimney stack in the fashion of a ship funnel. The small balcony reminds me of the emergency boats hanging on the side of seagoing ships. I like the triangular profile bay windows on the right hand side of the house, which very intelligently suggest the bow of the boat. The short columns delineating the first floor windows are also a stylistic delight, being endowed with rich leaf motif capitals, suggesting the luxuriant vegetation of the southern seas, where the inter-war Bucharest people were longing to escape, if not for real, then in an imaginary way, transporting themselves there in their magnificent Art Deco ocean liner-like houses…

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Historic Houses of Romania

VALENTIN MANDACHE's weblog

Tag Archives: Art Deco Style

Art Deco style school

Art Deco era streetcar

Art Deco lightwell

Mondrian like Art Deco – Modernist hallway floor patterns

Art Deco garage door masterpiece

Domenii – Casa Scanteii area: images from last Sunday’s architectural history & photo tour

Road utilities and Art Deco style house

Art Deco style villa name panel

Art Deco staircase tower window

Wrought iron gate with cubist pattern

Ancient Egyptian symbolism in an Art Deco panel

Art Deco style semi-detached houses in Ploiesti

Art Deco entertainment

Bucharest period doorways

Art Deco “ocean liner” façade

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