One step before demolition - interview with Eugenia Greceanu

On the opportunities and paradoxes of studying the historic city in Romania in the 1970s, ^interview1 with Eugenia Greceanu

For the architect Eugenia Greceanu, her professional activity in the field of monument protection and restoration, which began in the 1950s in the Historical Monuments Department, was intertwined with passionate and dedicated research work. Undoubtedly, one of his most significant contributions is the series of studies dedicated to reconsidering the historical value of the built heritage of the extra-Carpathian cities, resulting from field and archival research carried out in the seventh decade. In a review he wrote on the occasion of the republication of the volumes on the medieval complexes of Pitesti and Botoșani, the architect Teodor Octavian Gheorghiu emphasized the change of perspective - at least at the academic level - that these studies have imposed, rejecting the theory of the supposed late urbanization of the cities of Moldavia and Walla Wallachia, as well as the theory of the lack of value of the architectural heritage, which was condemned to disappear by the political factors of the time, but also by ^{professionals2}.

Begun as a "theme-punishment" following a conflict with the then director of the DMI, the art historian Vasile Drăguț, the research undertaken by the architect Eugenia Greceanu in the 1970s resulted in the two volumes mentioned above, initially published by the History Museum of the R.S.R.³, as well as in several articles in specialized magazines. This interview captures the conditions under which the author carried out her field research: requests from local officials concerned about the scale of the demolitions that were announced, the sometimes surprising reactions of communist dignitaries, visits to houses threatened with demolition, and surveillance by Securitate agents. There are also paradoxical situations, such as the one in which the architect was accommodated in the "party hotel" in Botoșani, enjoying all the advantages, even though she was working on a study that contradicted the urban restructuring policy of the communist regime. Recalling these moments reveals something about the passion and risks involved in such an endeavor, but also about the architect-researcher's ability to understand and work with local power hierarchies, nuances that no archival document could capture.

Well, let's start the story. How did we get to cities? To the study of extra-Carpathian cities in Romania. Considered in historical ^treatises4 as mere villages, until the end of the 19th century, apart from the state residences, boyar residences and monastery-churches, the rest were just villages. And towards the end of the 19th century, at a time unspecified in post-1950s writings - with the Kingdom - that is when the towns began to grow and form representative centers.

In love with Transylvanian cities - I was of the same opinion. I was born in Bucharest, but Bucharest didn't interest me at all, and I wasn't interested in any city outside the Carpathians, because I had the cities with fortified enclosures, with well-known development. Or even if they didn't have an enclosure, like Reghinul, for example, or a long fair, like Aradul, they made sense. And Vasile ^Drăguț6 came as director of ^Monuments5, supported by me. After a year - or after two years, 72-73 - Drăguț came to the conclusion that he knew architecture and didn't need architects. To get rid of me, he first asked Răzvan ^Theodorescu7 to take me to the Institute of Art History. Răzvan Theodorescu applied to the C.C.⁸, but the C.C. told him I didn't correspond as a file. The brother-in-law - 16 years in prison, the in-laws with an estate, the man with four years as a Soviet prisoner. So how could he get rid of me? He asked me to look after the extra-Carpathian cities. I sat and thought. I said: "Sir, the extra-Carpathian towns: villages until the end of the 19th century; there's almost nothing but isolated monuments. But finally, let's see. Let's see. I'm not indulging him." He hoped I'd resign, say I didn't want to. I said: "Fine, we'll do the extra-Carpathian cities, but first I'll finish my doctoral thesis". Because I had all the referees, I had published parts. But I hadn't had a chance to do the writing: "Give me a month to finish my thesis"^9. And I spent a month pouring over my thesis on the typewriter, from morning till 9 in the evening. And in a month everything was ready, with illustrations and everything. I finished the file one night, around 1 o'clock, I called the doorman to come with me to find a taxi to go home.

Why are we doing this now? There had been a request from the vice-president in charge of construction in Botoșani - an engineer, a family of intellectuals - his father had been a prefect - and who, seeing Gipsy ^Porumbescu 's project10 to destroy the city of Botoșani - as it was eventually done - realized that it was a calamity and asked for a study from the Monuments Department and asked Drăguț, that he wanted someone to come and do a study, to tell him what deserves to be preserved, because the city had been praised in writing by Iorga, by all who passed through there, that it was a wonderful city, beautiful, garden city... So the idea was that the first city would be Botoșanii - at the request of the local authority. But, in the meantime, we found ourselves at work with an architect from ICSOR, the current Urban Project, completely exasperated that the city of Roman is in danger of being wrecked - as the project envisaged - by Boris Grimberg. The project for Roman, as executed, has destroyed the old center. Totally! But I got there before it was touched, and did the study. The study was published in the Revue Roumaine d'Histoire in 1976.¹¹[...] After that I was to take Botoșan - requested by the poor vice-president with screams, to see what was taking shape. But we woke up again at the Direction with a man in a rage: "Sir, come and do the study of Pitești, it's a mess. These assholes are tearing everything down. They're destroying the old center, there's nothing left. Do the Pitești study".

Drăguț sent me immediately, he said: "Let's leave Botoșanii, let's go to Pitești, it's really very interesting". But in fact, he was hoping for something else. Dincă was first secretary there. The famous Dincă "Dincă Te-leagă"^12. And he hoped they'd arrest me, me walking around and commenting freely on what's being knocked down, what's being done. That I'd get it, with such supervision. But it was exactly the opposite. Because Dincă was not a dishonest man. I was supervised. I'd leave at 9 in the morning for work at the hotel and finish at 9 at night. And I was always meeting different people, probably secret service people. But at one point I even went to the Securitate. Because I found a beautiful old house and I started to write it down. I walked everywhere, through all the courtyards. I was never questioned or anyone got angry. I was very well received everywhere. And I marvel. I must have had a poor, innocent look on my face. And everyone was very nice, they opened doors, they showed me. Especially when I told them I was doing a monument inventory. Because they were all threatened with demolition. It was floating all over the old part of the city. "Are you here for the demolition?" "No, I'm not for the demolition. I'm here to document historical values." "Uh. And if you say it's a good old house, will it stay?" "I can't promise you that, because in the end it's up to the City Hall. Because they are responsible for the upkeep."

I went into all the courtyards, I looked, I drew, I made notes. And in one of the houses, an old man comes and says: "You're not allowed to go in and take pictures". "Why not? I'll write everything down." I'll write it down. The old man leaves, and 10 minutes later, a fellow in uniform shows up. "Would you kindly come next door?" Next door was the new Security building. I went with my badge, my delegation. "What are you doing?" "Look, look. What does the old man want?" "You know, him, being close to the Securitate, no offense, it's nothing, but we wanted to know." And then, from time to time, we'd meet them in various dugouts. "Kiss my hand, hello - hello." I just went about my business. The result was that the study, when I completed it in internal form, in triplicate, I made sure that, through the chairman of the Culture Committee, it should necessarily reach Dincă.

Dincă read my study. He wrote there: 'I was misinformed, I was told that the city is just a bunch of hovels and it is not. And Craiova Street will be preserved and restored - there were two main shopping streets - and another one, which went towards Argeș. And these will remain". And then the newspaper rushed to write that it would be the Lipscaniul Piteștilor. So we had a great success with Dincă. The draft of Dincă's resolution was kept in the County History Museum, where I hope it still is today.

After that I finally arrived in Botoșani, where I had an excellent reception. I was even put up at the Party hotel. And there, I found, the rooms for activists had light drinks - Pepsi or whatever it was, in the refrigerator, and they also had slippers in the room, so that people could have them, so that they could be comfortably installed. So we got right to this privileged level. Everything went very well, but nothing more could be done, because the idea of the demolition had been started by one of our best architects, Gipsy Porumbescu, who designed the project for the Botoșani City Hall.

And the city had to be disemboweled to create a square that could fit 10,000 people when the Comrade comes and speaks. And the stream on the western edge of the city - Dresleuca - where it turned north, was cut off by the main road to Suceava. All this Dresleuca was planted with spendid orchards. The great geographical dictionary says that Botoșanii was a town famous for its orchards and had an extraordinary fruit production. All this little delușorul was with orchards, some three villas and houses scattered among the orchards. The unconscious propagandists came and mutilated everything, they made a front of blocks on the edge of this slope, so that when the Tovaraș from Suceava comes, he will see a fortress of blocks. Because otherwise it was dominated by church towers. I have published the drawing, made by Titu ^Elian12, after the photographic unfolding - the historical silhouette of the city, with all the verticals of the religious buildings - the Bishop's Episcopy, the Armenian Church, etc. And the block barrier is still today threatened by landslides. Because it sits on a water table and water at the edge.

And then, the Botoșani study, which was being worked on at the Directorate, I finished it at the National Museum of ^History14 and sent it through the Museum. And I had to convince Florian ^Georgescu15 to send it for free. And Florică felt covered by the references of people of undisputable authority, but he didn't realize that he was actually endangering his situation badly, because he was in the middle of the demolition. The Pitesti and Botosani studies came out in '80-'81. With a plea to preserve, with a list of what must be preserved. You can imagine, the moment they appeared was incredible. And, indeed, some people said that this was also the reason why Florian Georgescu was sacked as director of the museum he had founded in 1970.

So that was the story. Florian Georgescu, poor guy, lost. In any case, I have always said that he was responsible for the printing, in 1980-81, of materials that could be considered subversive, because they were against the demolitions.

photo and explanations photo: Eugenia GRECEANU

NOTES:

1 The interview with Mrs. architect Eugenia Greceanu was conducted by the author in Bucharest on October 19, 2013, as an oral history source for her PhD thesis at the Central-European University of Budapest. Many thanks to Mr. Iuliu Șerban for facilitating this work.

2 Teodor Octavian Gheorghiu, 'Two long-awaited republications: Eugenia Greceanu - The medieval urban ensemble of Pitesti and the medieval urban ensemble of Botoșani', in Historia Urbana, vol. XIX, 2011, pp. 229-232.

3 Eugenia Greceanu, Ansamblul urban medieval Pitești, (Bucharest, National Museum of History, 1981, republished Pitești, Ed. Paralela 45, 2007) and Ansamblul urban medieval Botoșani (Bucharest, National Museum of History, 1982; 2nd edition, Iași, Demiurg Publishing House, 2009).

4 Reference to the four volumes of Istoria României, published between 1960-1964 at the Editura Academiei R.P.R. by a coordinating committee made up of acad. P. Constantinescu-Iași, acad. Emil Condurachi and acad. C. Daicoviciu.

5 Historical Monuments Directorate. Following some institutional reorganizations in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the DMI was transferred from the State Committee for Construction, Architecture and Systematization (CSCAS) to the State Committee for Culture and Art (CSCA), later the Committee for Socialist Culture and Education (CCES), and in 1977 it was practically abolished, but still under the pretext of reorganization.

6 The art historian Vasile Drăguț (1928-1987) was director of the Directorate of Historical Monuments from 1971 to 1976.

7 Răzvan Theodorescu (b. 1939) was deputy scientific director of the Institute of Art History from 1972-1977.

8 Central Committee of the Romanian Communist Party.

9 PhD thesis by the architect Eugenia Greceanu, entitled "The Architecture of the Romanian Walled Churches in Transylvania in the 13th-17th Centuries", completed in 1974, defended in 1977.

10 Architect Nicolae Porumbescu (1919-1999).

11 The study "La structure urbaine médiévale de la ville de Roman" was published in Revue Roumaine d'Histoire, XV, no. 1, 1976, pp. 39-56. Another study published by the architect Eugenia Greceanu was "Un problème actuel: l'urbanisme médiéval en Roumanie", in Revue Roumaine d'Histoire, XVIII, nr. 1, 1979, pp. 133-153.

12 Ion Dincă (1928-2007), first secretary of the Argeș County Party Committee (1973-1976). He followed a military career and held important positions in party and state structures, including local administration. He earned himself the nickname Dincă "Te-leagă", as it is said that he would not hesitate to arrest even prominent names of the communist nomenklatura.

13 The architect Titu Elian was the contact person of the Directorate of Historical Monuments (DMI) for the region of Moldova.

14 Following the disbanding of the Directorate of Historical Monuments, arch. Eugenia Greceanu was transferred in 1978 to the Museum of History of the RSR, where she worked until her retirement in 1983.

15 The historian Florian Georgescu (1924-1997), director of the Museum of History of the R.S.S.R. from 1971-1984.