Calea Lacul Tei

The last lotissement of the Municipal Company before the Second World War was designed in the Tei neighborhood and completes the previous projects: Cornescu and the Drumul la Tei. This neighborhood was one of the most affected by poverty, intended to be filled with cheap housing, according to the zoning proposed by Cincinat Sfințescu in the Systematization Plan.

Approval chronology and lotissement history

The lotissement was located in Yellow I Sector, on Calea Lacul Tei, near the Tonola Brick Factory. The intervention of the Company in this area affected by unhealthy living conditions has led to a worsening of the situation for the inhabitants of the neighborhood, but also to the creation of new houses for the Bucharest office clerks. The people that lived in the vicinity of the land where the Company decided to build the houses were affected by this lotissement, because it closed their access to the street. They sent a letter to the City Hall, asking for a resolution to the situation and signing: “Poor people, servants at various institutions in the Capital and our only support are these buildings, made with the labor of our poverty.” The request was not taken into account by the City Hall.
The Municipal Company had requested the approval of the Yellow Sector I lotissement ever since 1936, presenting to the City Hall the plans of the lotissement that contained over 200 houses, public institutions buildings, but also a park, a sports ground, a kindergarten and a school. The approval of this project depended on putting aside a batch of 20 dwellings for the officials of the City Hall of the Yellow Sector. On that land, the Company had already built a kindergarten and a children’s house in the early 1930s. After the plans were reworked, the lotissement was approved by the Technical Commission of the town hall in January 1937. The approval of the Superior Technical Council in December 1937 and of the Bucharest Municipal Factories followed. The confirmation of the distribution of the houses to the officials came from the mayor himself-Ion Săbăreanu, who “informs the Council that, with the occasion of the building of a lotissement on this land, he thought to reserve a surface for the construction of houses for the officials who do not have property – neither they nor their families – and to those who do not have any possessions, and their income is such that they cannot pay rent corresponding to their rank and family situation. ” Architect Ionescu proposed ten new types of housing, including types T1, T2, T3, specially designed for intersections. All were set back from the alignment by four meters (on Scheiul de Sus street) or five and were either one or two storeys. The company had given up the use of Eternit (fibre cement) for the roofing of houses in favor of tiles. In the 1937 construction campaign, the Company completed the dwellings between Calea Lacul Tei and A street (Dumitrache Ban). In the campaign of 1938, the lotissement plans shows that 156 villas were built under the same roof (grouped into 28 buildings) and also a single type 3 dwelling. These were located between Banul Dumitrache, Județului, Ghica Tei – the street that connects with Maria Ghiculeasa and again the short street that connects with Banul Dumitrache. The construction campaign from 1939 consisted in the execution of the houses between Ghica Tei street and Sf. Treime street, and in the one from the following year the Company was planning to erect 14 houses on A street (Ban Dumitrache) and 27 on B street (Maria Ghiculeasa), all built according to Dan Ionescu’s plans. After 1940, the parcel was extended to the east, where the Company built 28 coupled dwellings on A street (Ban Dumitrache) and 54 dwellings on Maria Ghiculeasa street, next to the ones that had already been built. The width of Dumitrache, Ghiculeasa and Banul Scarlat streets was 8.5 m, while on the two perpendicular streets, as well as on Scheiul de Sus street, it was 12 m. The initial project of the Company aimed to build a neighborhood comprised of houses that would extend to Teiul Doamnei street, but the costs of the war led to the abandonment of these plans. Even after the war, the Company’s plans were not continued, the lotissement being completed in a different form from what was initially planned.

The Calea Lacul Tei lotissement was completed by the new authorities not with housing units, but with buildings for public institutions and blocks of flats. Thus, the architects Grigore Ionescu and Stan Bortnowski designed the Institute for the Protection of the Mother and Child, formerly known as “Emilia Irza”, between 1949 and 1959, and the Faculty of Roads and Bridges (1950):
“At the end of the 1940s, constructions were erected in Bucharest, where an interwar, modern, architectural expression was used. Very quickly they will prove to be the last of their kind. They were the Children’s Hospital, formerly «Emilia Irza», and the building for the Faculty of Roads and Bridges (1949–1950, arch. Grigore Ionescu), from Lacul Tei Boulevard, located opposite Lacul Tei. Relatively similar, the two buildings, of medium height, GF + 2/4, respectively GF + 3, were noted by the simple and clear volumes whose horizontality was underlined by the windows arranged in continuous strips along the entire length of the main facades. If the Children’s Hospital still retains the initial appearance in general, the quality of the original architecture of the Faculty of Roads has been reduced to obscurity by successive transformations and by the incorporation into the series of non-expressive buildings made in the 1970s-80s for the Construction Institute. In addition to these projects, the architect Gabriel Cristea designed, between 1970 and 1972, the Faculty of Hydrotechnics, and at the end of the 1970s, at the intersection with Barbu Văcărescu the headquarters of the Institute of Energy Studies and Designs was built. The boulevard was laid between 1974 and 1979, on the basis of a project of the architects Carol Hacker, I. M. Niculescu, Peter Ferenczy, Yvonne Răzor. According to the architect Alexandru Panaitescu, this pediment is characterized by the “aggressiveness with which the blocks had to be placed, usually GF + 10, sometimes with a GF + 14 accent. These, mostly with standard or reused sections, usually with apartments on the ground floor, are arranged at the limit of the sidewalk”. Between 1975 and 1985, in the southern part of the lotissement, on Ghica Tei Street, the architect Albert Mihail Caffé designed an old people’s home.