The City Through Metamorphoses: Bucharest and number 16 of Negustori street / Merchants’ street
The City Through Metamorphoses: Bucharest and number 16 of Negustori street / Merchants’ street

Summary/Abstract: Scientific definitions and administrative delimitations do nothing but reflect, more or less exactly, how the centre of a city is perceived. The fruit of a long phenomenon of spontaneous and directed coagulation of a territory that originally housed rural settlements which came to gravitate around a market (i.e. a trading area) and a royal court, the current city of Bucharest, a name that not coincidentally suggests the plural, is no exception to the previous statement. If only for this reason, identifying the centre of this territory is not a simple undertaking, as evidenced by investigations carried out by specialists in various fields. In contrast to these, the research summarized below was triggered by the study of a single listed property and its immediate context. This approach revealed that, from the middle of the 19th century until the interwar period, the estate experienced a spectacular evolution, transforming from a household with a rather rural character into a real residence in terms of its relationship with the public domain and with obvious aspirations for an elegant private life. The attempt to establish the extent to which these aspirations were justified or not, the extent which was required to define the optimal way to preserve the building, led to the expansion of the urban scale research. It turned out that the impressive transformation of the property was probably triggered by the fact that the entire area had begun to be perceived since the second quarter of the 19th century, even by the authorities, as a pericentral one. Just as plausible, this perception was correctly interpreted by the owners as an obligation to contribute (also) by promoting high quality architecture in all respects. Grafted onto a street net improved by the town hall, the efforts of the private environment have only strengthened the urban status of the area – a strong reason why the aspirations of the residence in question are fully justified by the historical evolution of the city itself. Likewise, the solution to complete those aspirations was inspired from the same historical evolution as well, while the given solution has been implemented through the recently completed execution works which, therefore, contribute to the metamorphosis of a neighbourhood which was born in the space between two trading poles in what can be considered a part of the city centre.

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