BOOK
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Books A tale of three cities
Books
There is more than one Ottoman city to be explored without a time machine. Maria Eliadesreviews Vassilis Colonas' Greek Architects in the Ottoman Empire (19th-20th Centuries) Three cities: Istanbul, Izmir and Thessaloniki, as revealed in Greek Architects in the Ottoman Empire by Vassilis Colonas, were at the forefront of the reforms at the end of the Empire. From Greek Architects' beginning, the topography of changes flows through the work of its artists. Imperical Redux Colonas' book, simply put, glitters. He begins with a survey of late Ottoman history, stressing that through various edicts, such as that of 1839, the Hatt-i Hümayun edict of 1856 and the Tanzimat Reforms, non-ethnically Turkish citizens were granted rights equal to that of Muslim citizens. In turn, technological and economic innovations trickled into all aspects of the Empire. In particular, the millet system, which let minority groups govern themselves, divided the cities according to religion and not ethnicity. When the 1856 edict was passed, the Patriarchate became the head of the Greek millet and its artisans and merchants became more mobile. Coupled with rising urban populations of Europeans, the landscape of the Empire's main cities evolved. Old separations of ethnicity and religion began to matter less as the millet groups mingled one with the Turkish majority so that a new, economically-based order dictated the layout of the cities. Golden Threads Like all artisans for hire, the Greek architects responded to the desires of their clients, Europeans, Turks and other Ottoman subjects, like diplomats. They tempered the aspirations of the nouveau riche with their own aesthetics. In Istanbul, that meant the new buildings were a pastiche of Art
Nouveau, Neo-Classicism and Ottoman nostalgia. But, as Colonas points out with a quote from the 1887 issue of Imerologion tis Anatolis (The Diary of Anatolia), the result was far from even: “Since the attitudes, ideas and feelings of the peoples of this new Babylon are so varied, and often so diametrically opposed, is it not the most natural thing in the world that their expression of these attitudes, ideas and feelings will be entirely different?” The city's texture had its roots in multiplicities both new and old. That feeling, especially in Pera and Galata, is still present today. The hopes of the people who lived in these cities made the buildings endure more than their existence as high art. Their energy carries the legacy of the creators and the first inhabitants. Istanbul, Izmir and Thessaloniki alike became themselves through the need for that architectural growth. Izmir, for instance, became a city of Hellenic sentiment because the heavy Greek population desired more NeoClassical designs than Istanbul or Thessaloniki. The Omireio Girls' School, according to a 1887 issue of the paper Nea Smyrni (New Smyrna) Colonas quotes, was “a fine marble building,/ Constructed in the style of a more gracious age” that the anonymous writer compares to the pre-Christian Greek ideal of an Olympian temple. There is more to the buildings, Colonas means to say, than their appearances. The Path of an Academic Unfortunately, in the book's zeal to speak about Istanbul, little is said about Izmir's and Thessaloniki's streets and buildings. Not even a taste of some of the now-gone streets comes across these pages. Colonas does manage to note that the villas of Thessaloniki had symbols, which signaled the ethnic and religious feelings of the inhabitants but, with observations like: the general
52 Time Out Istanbul January 2010
Izmir, for instance, became a city of Hellenic sentiment because the heavy Greek population desired more NeoClassical designs than Istanbul or Thessaloniki treatment of the facades of the Greek villas in line with Renaissance models reflect the last phase of Athenian neo-classicism, a preference for neo-Baroque
pediments, with basic references to Sicilian and colonial Baroque, the reader is very aware that the book is more welcome to the academically or art-minded. This is unfortunate but bearable in this otherwise gorgeously illustrated and informative coffee table piece. The best times with this volume are spent re-imagining Istanbul, Izmir and Thessaloniki in a tour of the mind which beats away the lingering taste of sentiment among Colonas' “vacuum at the heart of the city, redolent of departure, absence and loss...” Greek Architecture in the Ottoman Empire (19th -20th Centuries) by Vassilis Colonas was printed by Olkos Publishing in 2005.