House of architect Grigore Cerkez

In 1977 I was a fifth-year student at the Institute of Architecture "Ion Mincu" in Bucharest. It was the year of the earthquake that shook the country and strongly affected Bucharest. I remember it as if it were yesterday. On the evening of the earthquake I was in the karate dojo in the Ștrandul Tineretului sports complex. We had just finished our training and were sitting in seiza (meditation position) searching for inner peace and tranquility, when we were brought back to reality by a noise like I had never heard before. With an extraordinary presence of mind, Sensei Nicolae Bialokur commanded us to exit the dojo onto the dojo terrace, the pediment of the training hall collapsing behind us.

I went home with a friend (I was staying with my parents in Vatra Luminoasă) and on the way we saw the ruins of the Lizeanu block. At home, I found my parents in good health and we immediately set off towards the center of Bucharest where, on Domnița Anastasia Street, no. 7, in the "Gheorghe Tăttărescu" Museum, my father, the painter George Ștefănescu, had his creative studio. On the way I began to realize the real scale of the disaster that night. When I reached Brezoianu Street, I saw the block on the corner of the street turned to dust and powder. Jumping over bricks, tiles, construction debris, I entered the museum gangway where I was greeted by another picture of destruction. The exterior wall on the upper levels of the block that bordered the museum's inner courtyard had collapsed over the left wing of the museum's ceardac and completely destroyed it.

That night and the next day, as I walked from dawn to dawn through Bucharest from one end to the other with my good friend the photographer Dinu Lazăr, I realized that it had been affected by a cataclysm never before seen by our generation. The following days the news about the earthquake and its aftermath kept us on tenterhooks and seemed never-ending.

On the evening of March 21, I received the news that was to disturb me greatly. My teacher, the architect Sandu Miclescu, informed me that the next day demolition work would begin on the headquarters of the Union of Fine Artists on Sevastapol Street, which was located in the Grigore Cerkez House, and we had to survey it. Why is it being demolished and why the hurry? Nobody knew, but a rumor was circulating - namely, the building had been damaged by the earthquake and was endangering the safety of those who would be in it or passers-by. The next day I could see that the only thing damaged was the outer wall of the courtyard, which had visible cracks due to the tram that had been passing along Sevastopol Street for many years. The haste was due to the fact that now was the propitious moment when as many architectural monuments as possible could be made to disappear without resistance from anyone.

As a child, I had often gone with my father, the painter George Ștefănescu, to the Union's headquarters, either to the offices for a problem that my father had to solve, or as a family guest at events organized in the magnificent hall. In my mind's eye, images of a fairy-tale house with a dream-like architecture, shrouded in mystery and where the elite of visual artists gathered. Disparate images of the beautiful fireplace, statues adorning the walls, details of wainscoting or staircases and balustrades, slightly veiled, in the half-light, with characters shrouded in the mists of time, came back to me. The next day I met in front of the UAP headquarters with two university colleagues, Ileana Murgescu and Mihai Opreanu, and we started to do the survey. Already teams of workers from the Plastic Fund, coordinated by Union officials and with the help of some visual artists, had started to dismantle the decorative elements on the facade and balconies. The house of my childhood memories was now bathed in a bright, brutal March light, and my eyes were no longer those of a child who wanted to become a painter like his father, but the eyes of a young architect in the making, obviously strongly marked by the events he had witnessed. Under great tension I was recording images, walking through the house Grigore Cerkez had built for him and his family. Nothing had been left to chance, the architect had probably designed and built the house of his dreams. Every space had been thought out down to the smallest detail, the wainscoting and the tapestries, the staircases and the banisters, the doors where even the latches bore the architect's imprint, the ceilings, the vaults, the decorated arches, the beautiful fireplace from my memories and the beautiful figures on the beams. It was a lesson in architecture and interior design that I have never forgotten. It was all amplified by the fact that as I discovered, understood and enjoyed the beauty of the spaces, the detailing, it all disappeared before my eyes.

In two days, on March 22 and 23, the beautiful house of architect Grigore Cerkez was first stripped of its interior and exterior decoration, and then disappeared forever from the Bucharest landscape. As we were drawing, measuring, dimensioning the plans, the decorative stone elements, decorated ceilings, decorative wainscoting, statues, balustrades, staircases, doors, etc. were dismantled and transported in trucks that left with a destination little known to us student architects. What we had heard was that a site for the house had been found on the site of the Plastic Fund Combine and that on the basis of our survey, with the decorative elements being dismantled, numbered, listed and transported to the Combine's warehouses, the house would soon be rebuilt.

What happened to the decorative elements, the fireplace, the carved stone parapets, the interior carvings, the wainscoting, the parquet floors, the doors, the marble steps, what happened to our relay, I cannot tell you. At the time I was an avid photographer and didn't go anywhere without my beloved Rolleiflex and the new Canon FTBQL of which I was very proud. But under the tension of the moment I managed to take a few photos that have been preserved in my personal archive as the only witnesses of the disappearance forever of a great lesson of authentic Romanian architecture - the House of the architect Grigore Cerkez.

29.11.2011 Bucharest

Grigore P. Cerkez (1850-1927), professor architect Nicolae Lupu, Arhitectura magazine no. 4, from 1973, pp. 121-130

In the Archives of the National Heritage Institute, in the Historical Monuments Directorate fund, information about the physical condition of the building in the period 1956-1969 was preserved, since the Grigore Cerkez residence in Calea Victoriei was included in the list of monuments - position 12 (HCM no. 1160 of 1955).

Report of the delegates of the Directorate of Historical Monuments: arh. Paul Emil Miclescu and Eng. Theodor Barbu from 1969

Inside the large meeting room on the ground floor, the side panels will be painted with the same existing pattern. On the ceiling the existing gaps will be filled in in the same material and color, leaving the overall painting intact and dusting with a soft bristle brush. No bronze or other color will be returned. The remainder of the ground, first and second floor rooms will be repainted in the usual painting. Calcium where there is and where there has been oil, paint in an ornamental pattern imitation-petal pattern in the first floor meeting room near the management office. În aceeași sală se recomandă păstrarea pardoselii lemn mozaicat-intarsie. It is recommended that the hardwood doors be cleaned. It is desirable to revert to the color of the wainscoting, so that all the woodwork in the room will be in tone.

On the exterior, noting the existing cracks in the walls of the entrance tower and the side tower on Sevastopol Street, the DMI delegates propose the construction of reinforced concrete over vaults inside the building in the spaces between the vaults currently existing. These interior belts, embedded in masonry, will be anchored to the exterior walls. The section of reinforced concrete will be 20/30 cm and the reinforcing iron 8-10 cm2 section, flared externally in dovetail to provide strength. The DMI delegates recommend that these 2 works be done during the summer, in no hurry, working inside the rooms concerned, the current accounting and the upstairs alcove of the library. In both rooms, the existing floor will be partially or totally removed to overbolt and reinforce the current cracked portion.

The exterior cleaning will be done after the pattern of that carried out at the Arc de Triomphe, with straw-brush only, and where there are lichens with rounded-edged spacers, under no circumstances will the exterior be bush-bored. Where there are gaps, pinches from the bombardment will be filled, bricks will be put in place. The filling process will be used, and only if necessary, the macecare (cement paste with brick dust of the same color as the other bricks). Where there is stone, the same will be done with stone tiles, avoiding cement patching. The stone ornaments and profiles shall be made of solid stone, as the original or as similar as possible to the original and resistant to atmospheric agents and wear.

To reconstruct the dormers facing Calea Victoriei, which were degraded by the bombing by reusing and completing the original stone elements preserved in the inner courtyard of the building.

The current sheeting is to be replaced, it is recommended that the sheets be laid directly on the astereaux with tasouri (trapezoidal slats). For an example, contact will be made with the Philharmonic, where Engineer Veniamin carried out similar repairs. On the occasion of the restoration of the roof, to study the possibility of reconstructing the pediment towards the south gable.

ARHIVA INP, fonds DMI, file 2117/1956-1969, ARHIVA INP, fonds DMI, file 574/1967, Trustul de Reparații în Construcții - Design Unit