1937 Three projects in the Danube Delta

After resigning on November 8, 1936 from the City Hall of the Capital, where he had been working since 1929, Octav Doicescu had, during 1937, an intense collaboration with the recently founded National Tourist Office, for which he realized several projects: the headquarters of the National Tourist Office in 8 Wilson Street (today's Dem. I. Dobrescu Street), Babele Hut in the Bucegi Mountains, several typical projects of mountain huts, the Delta Hotel and the Ilgani and Insula Lupilor huts in Vâlcov, in the Danube Delta. The ONT was founded on 24 February 1936, when the law on the organization of tourism was passed. Sergiu Dimitriu, Undersecretary of State at the Ministry of the Interior, was appointed president of the organization, and Octav Doicescu joined his team.

"The head of the tourist section is a large diorama 16 meters long, 3 meters high and 4 meters deep, representing the flora and fauna of theDanube Delta, that melancholic Eden, as Romanian officials presented it"^1.
The need for a national tourist office in Romania arose not only as a result of the establishment of similar bodies in other European countries, but also as a strategy of King Carol II to make Romania known in Western European countries and win them over as friends and allies, given the fear generated by the rise of Nazi Germany and the spectre of war that was already looming.
This is also the main reason why Professor Dimitrie Gusti, the organizer of the Romanian Pavilion at the International Exhibition in Paris, allocated a large basement space to Romanian tourism.

Vâlcov Delta Hotel

The series of works in the Danube Delta, on which Octav Doicescu had the arch. Sorin Mincu, begins with the Delta Hotel at ^Vâlcov2, a town on the Chilia Arm in Ismail County, now in Ukraine. In the 1930s, Vâlcov had about 12,000 inhabitants. Vâlcovul, dubbed the Venice of the Delta by the inter-war press, was one of the most picturesque parts of the Danube Delta. The Lipovans used to drive their small boats right up to their houses.
The Chilia Arm Delta, which belonged to Bessarabia until 1918, was returned to Romania after the Union with Bessarabia on March 27, 1918. With the cession of Bessarabia in June 1940, Ismail county became part of the USSR until the break-up of communism, except for a brief period from 1941 to 1944, when it was regained by Romania during the war. Today, Valcov and the Chilia Arm delta are part of Ukraine.
For the strategic reasons explained above, but also out of the need to make known on an international level the fact that this territory belongs to Romania, the NTO has focused its attention on intensifying tourism in this area.
Cruises on the Danube to Vâlcov are being organized. For tourists wishing to visit this corner of the country, the elegant ship 'King Carol II' - the largest river vessel in Europe at the time, built at the Turnu Severin shipyards and inaugurated in May 1936 in the presence of President Benek of Czechoslovakia - is made available. Leaflets popularizing the picturesque Valcov were published.
Octav Doicescu designs in Vâlcov, in the immediate vicinity of the pier, "a large hotel equipped with all modern conveniences in the style of Western hotels"^3.
The 525 square meter building, built in the regional style, made of wood and covered with reed, is powered by an electric power plant, has 23 rooms with a total of 46 beds, bathrooms, a large hall on the ground floor, reading rooms, restaurant, ^terraces4. Press reports of the time speak of "the luxury and comfort of this unique hotel built only of wood, over 200 km from Galati"^5. The hotel is equipped with Dutch tablecloths and bed linen, down cushions, woolen blankets, curtains made of English cretonne and Romanian Dutch, porcelain ^tableware6. Bridges and bridges are built around the hotel, canals are cleaned up and a beautiful ^park is laid out7. The foundation stone was laid on August 6, 1937 in the presence of ONT president Sergiu Dimitriu, the prefect, other officials and architects Octav Doicescu and Sorin ^Mincu8, and the inauguration took place on July 29, ¹⁹³⁹⁹. During the Soviet occupation of 1940-1941, the hotel was devastated and partially destroyed, and in 1942 it was restored by the Romanian administration.

Two hunting lodges, Ilgani and Wolf Island

"In its campaign to endow the country with creations in all aspects of tourism, the National Tourist Office also provided for the erection of a number of hunting lodges. In addition to the mountainous regions where hunting is practiced, where such lodges are still to be found and where the National Tourist Office plans to build others, according to all modern rules and requirements, the question of equipping the Danube Delta region with such lodges has been raised. This region, which is an immense hunting paradise, where the most diverse, rarest and rarest species attract hunting tourists in considerable numbers, brought by the world renown that this corner of our country has acquired, was in immediate need of such a facility."¹⁰
Built with ground floor and attic, in the regional style, of beams and covered with reed, the two hunting lodges were designed by arch. Octav Doicescu and arh. Sorin ^Mincu11/12 for people from the upper class of society, thus offering superior accommodation conditions. There was a spacious dining room on the ground floor, and eight one-bedded rooms and two three-bedded rooms were provided in the attic, these rooms were equipped with hot and cold ^showers13. They were fully equipped and equipped with special facilities for hunters and gamekeepers.
"The interior of the huts was decorated in the spirit of local art, employing the vivid color of the Lipovanian decorative. Rustically crafted wood, fishing motifs and ornamentation, with trophies chosen from the hunting diversity of the area. The huts are built on a prival two meters high to be protected from the danger of flooding."¹⁴
The two sites were chosen "at the points richest in game, where the passageways for puddle game are. Insula Lupilor is a very well known place for hunters, being often visited by prominent personalities from the political and hunting world in the country and abroad"¹⁵. Ilgani hunting lodge was built in 1937 on the Sulina Channel, at mile 32, in the small village of Ilganii de Sus, opposite the village of Principele Carol.

A little bit of history

After hundreds of years of Ottoman rule, the Treaty of Adrianople of 1829 brought the mouth of the Danube under the rule of the Tsarist Empire. Sea traffic on the Danube began to increase as the liberation of the Principalities from the economic monopoly of the Porte resulted in a massive increase in exports. Added to this, the industrialization of the Western countries led to a decline in agricultural production and the need to find sources of cheap grain for the industrial proletariat of these countries, especially the English, as well as markets for their industrial products.
While until 1829 Turkey had taken care to maintain proper navigation at the mouth of the Danube, being interested in supplying Constantinople with grain, wood, sheep, butter and honey, Russia, having become the new master of the Danube mouth, deliberately blocked the Danube mouth for both political and economic reasons, favoring the port of Odessa. This and other reasons led to the outbreak of the Crimean War of 1853-1856, which would have the effect of pushing Russia away from the mouth of the Danube.
The Paris Peace Congress of 1856 laid the foundations for the European Commission for the Danube (CED), whose task was to unblock the mouths of the Danube and to determine the branch of the Danube on which the rectification works would be carried out - the Danube being very sinuous, it was difficult to navigate and it was necessary to choose one of the three branches to be straightened. From Chilia, Sulina and Sf. Gheorghe the Sulina branch was chosen, which eventually became the Sulina Canal.
The rectification of the Sulina Arm is also linked to the emergence of new settlements established by the Romanian authorities. "If the village of Ilganii de Sus seems to have existed before 1856, the village of Principele Carol, now called Partizani, was established only on July 26, 1899."¹⁶
The very good navigability of the Sulina Canal allowed the imposing ship "King Carol II" to navigate it, foreign tourists could reach Ilgani quickly, embarking even from Turnu Severin. The vicinity of Prince Charles (later to become King Charles II) gave the location prestige. But the most important factors in determining the location of the hunting lodge were the rare bird ponds in the immediate vicinity of the hunting lodge to the north and the game-filled forests a little to the east of the ponds. From the lodge you could hunt with an angler in Tatar, Lungulețu, Meșterul and other smaller lakes. This whole area was already a nature reserve by then, hunting was allowed only to those who obtained a permit, mainly foreigners, in whom the government was very interested. The wildlife around the Ilgani hut, much coveted by keen western hunters, consisted mainly of gypsy, little egret, duck, wood nuthatch, fox, rabbit and bizam.
The hut, originally situated in a secluded position at the beginning of a small branch of the Sulina Canal, is now much more exposed after the rectification works on the canal, which continued after 1944, changed the morphology of the site, the secondary branch was eliminated and the main canal was crossed in front of the hut. Ilgani Hut is currently owned by a private person.
The hotel at Vâlcov was intended for tourism
"[...] But the lover of full hiking needs the other side of the Delta, the one ruled by solitude and cared for only by the One who has lasted. Closer to this Delta are the huts of Ilgani and the Isle of the Wolves, with their peaceful solitude and their paths lost in the grass and puddles.
Strolling through this Delta, in the hours of quiet twilight, you can catch something of the endless peace of perfect nature in the smooth flight of the long-screaming birds.
On the shimmering waters, the pelicans, with their smooth, undulating glide, silently appear from the reeds, their gills tucked in the down. From the thickets, the lilies, with their sharp streaks on the mirror of the water, emerge from the thickets, and the ducks, with their long, swift flight, take flight over the haystacks.
The lonely researchers of the Delta say that the ibises and flamingos would wander here and there with the high and delicate step of the whale, at the hour when the diver with his shaggy head and cheeky lookout hides in the dark coves and when only the moon is left to rise among the willows spread out like a lonely prayer, over the watch of the sleeping waters.
By the grinders, where the waters are less cunning, the hares are at that hour. And the wolves sniff the scent of the hunted game from the fields. The wild boar stirs in his sleep and scares the rest of the smaller wild boar, and the fox sneaks its sharp snout through the reeds, in search of a trail of feathers shaken from flight.
At dawn, at dawn, eaglets begin to moan in the thickly braided grasses, and silver-bellied crakes play in the small, tiny crickets. At the depths, in the great inlets, large fish begin to move, the sand eels and the wrasses, with their sharp heads and sharp wings.
And in the water, like flocks of springtime sky, the small, fast, blue-glimmering, small and fast bream pass by, scurrying in their hundreds and thousands."
(Mugur Mardan, Romania magazine, 5/1940)

Wolves' Island Hut

The hunting lodge located on the Island of the Wolves (the place is now called Grindul Lupilor) was built at the same time as the Ilgani Lodge, following an identical design. Grindul Lupilor is a tongue of new land that has sedimented over the last 2,000 years in the Sinoe - Zmeica - Golovița - Razelm lake complex and separates the waters of Lake Sinoe from those of Lake Zmeica.
The Wolves' Island (Grind) Hut is located at the northeastern end of the grind, on the shore of Lake Golovița, only 5 kilometers as the crow flies in a straight line from Gura Portiței. At the other extreme south-western end of the grind, at a distance of about 20 km, are the ruins of the Histria Fortress, abandoned by its last inhabitants around 800 AD due to the gradual closure with silt of the bay to the sea that had made possible the existence of a flourishing commercial port here for hundreds of years. Unlike Ilgani, there are no forests here, only reeds growing on the alluvial soil. The motivation for choosing Wolf Island was the huge variety of rare migratory birds that winter here.
The lodge was erected "in an excellent hunting spot.... in an exceptionally interesting landscape"^17.
The Danube Delta was considered a "hunters' paradise". There is no hunting ground in Europe with such a wide variety of game as the Danube Delta, due to the fact that, in addition to domestic game, five migratory routes pass through here, along which birds from Europe and Asia flow. In their path, the whole Delta, but especially the Wolf's Grind, is a stopover point offering them optimal conditions for shelter and feeding. They often stay here for longer periods of time, and when weather conditions in the fall become harsh, they continue their journey southwards, while in spring, when the instinct to breed calls for it, some species continue northwards, while others nest in the Delta. Here it was possible to hunt ducks and other puddle game, as well as cranes, swans, pelicans, wild geese, wild geese, geese, gannets, snipe, snipe, doublets, nuthatches, egrets, egrets, and terns. In the 1970s, the Wolves' Island cottage suffered a fire and was later rebuilt with some modifications. The cottage was home to the Wolf's Island Ornithological Monitoring Center until 2019.

NOTES:

1 Laurențiu Vlad, Imagini ale identității românești, Ed. Meridiane, 2001, p. 110.
2 Revista Romania, 1937, no. 9, published the drawn perspective of the project signed by arh. Octav Doicescu and arh. Sorin Mincu. The Vâlcov hotel building is missing from the list of Octav Doicescu's works published by prof. arh. Peter Derer in the volume Despre arhitectură, Editura Tehnică, 1983, the probable reason being that during the communist regime the work was not mentioned.
3 Revista Romania, 1937, no. 7, p. 30.
4 Romania Magazine, 1939, no. 6-7.
5 Opinia, July 30, 1939.
6 Curentul, January 18, 1939.
7 Universul, August 9, 1937.
8 Adevărul, August 8, 1937.
9 Universul, June 30, 1939.
10 Revista Romania, 1937, no. 11.
11 Peter Derer, On Architecture, Technical Publishing House, 1983, p. 11.
12 The magazine Romania, 1937, no. 11, p. 18, publishes the drawn perspective of the design of the two huts, Ilgani and Insula Lupilor, with the authors mentioned, arh. Octav Doicescu and arch. Sorin Mincu.
13 ONT brochure - four years of existence, 1936-1940, published in 1942.
14 Romania magazine, 1937, no. 11.
15 Idem.
16 Motoc C. Corneliu, Manole I. Gheorghe, Monografia satelor Partizani și Ilganii de Sus, Tulcea, 2015.
17 ONT brochure - four years of existence, 1936-1940, published in 1942.
18 Idem.