Lupească

The second project of the Municipal Company, on Lupească Street, was less symbolic, because the sector and the ring in which the Company placed the lotissement were located far from the city center.

The chronology of the authorization and history of the lotissement:

The plot was part of the first sector, near the Dealul Spirii Railway Station, at the intersection of the Drumul Sarii streets and the Răzoare intersection. In 1911, the Company built 30 houses, semi-detached houses (11 groups) or fourunit buildings (two groups). First, the architects and engineers of the Company, probably together with the employees of the municipality, aligned Lupească Street. Thus, they opened the Lupească Nouă street in continuation of the existing street, which they renamed Sebastian in 1928 and Lupească Veche, near the Basalt Factory (initially renamed Longinus, in 1915, later renamed Sergeant Nuțu Ion, in memory of a hero of the First World War). Cincinat Sfințescu mentioned that the houses from 1911 were of type A (one floor with two rooms and a small hall, with a ​​48 sqm footprint) and type B (one floor, three rooms and a hall, around 72 sqm). A photograph of the houses from 1933 illustrated the new rhythm of the street, characterized by the architectural and urban elements that ensured its uniformity, such as the wooden gates that separated the properties, the fascia boards of the houses that took after the model of the gates, as well as the equal spacing of the brick chimneys and windows. The company sold them at a price of 3,000 lei (type A) and 4,350 lei (type B), which is half the price of those on Clucerului street. The materials used were similar to those on Clucerului street, such as concrete for the foundation, brickwork for walls and eternit or sheet metal for roofs. In September 1911, the Town Hall installed the house number plates, connected the houses to the sewerage system and paved the street with cobblestone. Unlike the houses on Candiano Popescu and Clucerului, those in Lupească were not placed at a distance from the alignment of the street, and they respected the north-south orientation. Undoubtedly, the Lupească lotissement was a better financial choice for the working class than Clucerului. In 1912, Ioachimescu presented the results of the 1911 construction campaign in his article in The Bulletin of the Polytechnic Society, in which he explained their main technical characteristics, the option for semi-detached houses in contrast to apartment buildings and the importance of family life in a house surrounded by a garden . The engineer emphasized the use of Romanian construction materials, published the plans and sections of the houses and clarified that the constructions were made with materials provided to the Company by private contractors. Also, Ioachimescu mentioned that in these first houses on Candiano Popescu, Clucerului and Lupească lived more than 600 people, who were obliged to contract an insurance. In the event of death, the houses were left to the heirs without the need to pay the remaining installments. Ioachimescu invoked the need to help the most vulnerable citizens to purchase a home, and the Company’s logic was not limited to financial profit.

Critique

Nevertheless, Dr. C. Gh. Orleanu, the vice president of the Hygiene Council, the initiator of the proposal to build housing by the Communal Council since 1906, pointed out the wrong direction of the reform regarding the distribution of housing. Orleanu claimed that the new owners were not the target group of the Municipal Society and emphasized the absence of the workers among the beneficiaries of the houses: “It is correct that the Municipal Company for Low Cost Housing brings aid to the destitute population by building cheap houses, but if we look closely how things stand , we will see that most are rather well-off people and that they could have built a house on the outskirts of the city. ” While the advisers initiated the reform considering a price of 3,000 lei – accessible to the vulnerable classes, half of the Company’s production in 1911 cost more than double. Ioachimescu did not mention anything about the demolition of unsanitary houses and the displacement of their inhabitants in new houses or about the effects of tuberculosis, the initial objectives of the reformers.

Continuation of the lotissement

In 1922, the Company continued its work on the Lupească lotissement, where it designed and built ten other semi-detached houses, back to back with those already built in 1911. These were types B and B1,ground floor only, and were covered with galvanized sheet metal, according to the plans signed by the architect Fr. Reiss. The first of these authorization permits was issued by the town hall on August 1921, for the construction of a “ground floor and bricked cellar, covered with metal”. The following notices, for the other four houses, were from July and September 1922.

The residents of Sergent Nuțu Ion street, from Lupească plot, argue that the houses were built for the workers, especially for the CFR workers and for those who worked in the nearby factories. The systematization of Sebastian street in the 1980s did not affect the lotissement, as the demolition of the old houses and the building of the apartment buildings stopped next to it.