Developers envision historic buildings damaged by Beirut explosion
[ad_1]
Sitting in his reading room, Fadlallah Dagher gestured towards a 145-year-old arched window – or what was left of it.
Beside him lay the remains of the intricate window latticework and wooden filigree, shattered to pieces by the massive explosion that rocked Beirut last week.
“This second is equivalent to more than 15 years of war,” said Dagher, referring to the 1975-1990 civil war which made the Lebanese capital a synonym of destruction.
Dagher, a 60-year-old architect, had spent decades restoring the elegant 4,800-square-foot two-story family home that his great-grandfather first completed in 1875. In Beirut’s eastern neighborhood of Gemmayzeh, it was a jewel-shaped example of Ottoman houses and the fin-de-siècle French Mandate of Lebanon, with its three-arched facade and wide balconies.
Now Dagher has to start over. The house has significant cracks in its sandstone walls, due to the displacement of its different sections in different ways compared to the punch of the explosion. Pieces of the original painted plaster had collapsed and were now gathered in a pile near a scaffold, which was deployed to support the ceiling. Cabinets, walls and paintings bear a pattern of splashes of divots from a hail of shards of glass. A chandelier had dipped on the bed of 90-year-old Dagher’s mother.
âThe third day after the explosion, when I realized what had happened, I broke down completely. I cried all the time, âhe said, his contrite smile fading at the memory.
The August 4 explosion was caused by the ignition of more than 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate, a common fertilizer and explosive, which caught fire after years of improper storage in the Port of Beirut. The explosion created a pressure wave that ravaged the capital, killing more than 170 people and injuring around 6,000; hundreds are still missing.
It also mutilated some 8,000 homes, officials said, leaving more than 300,000 people homeless. The areas hardest hit by the explosion, including predominantly Christian neighborhoods such as Gemmayzeh, Mar Mikhael and Achrafieh, Dagher also said, also had the highest concentration of historic structures.
Restoring such architectural splendor, let alone rebuilding lives, will be extremely difficult. Even before the explosion, Lebanon was essentially a failed state: banks had stopped giving money to account holders; the national currency collapsed against the dollar; prices were skyrocketing; 10pm power cuts were standard.
With many homeowners in dire straits, Lebanese environmentalists now also fear an attack from opportunistic developers willing to grab historic buildings for a song, tear them down and turn them into apartment buildings.
It would not be the first time. During the Civil War, the downtown area of ââthe capital became an artillery zone for rival militias. The area, a sort of Las-Vegas-on-the-Med with a collection of historic buildings, markets and boulevards, has become a wasteland devoid of people and commercial activity.
With the end of the war, it once again became prime real estate. The government created Solidere, a public-private company that appropriated the land, with the aim of encouraging investment in the devastated center. But few developers were interested in refurbishing what was left standing. Hundreds of historic buildings originally intended for restoration have been razed, without any law to stop the destruction. (The law only protected so-called âarchaeological structuresâ built before 1700.)
In their place, high-rise towers appeared, with luxury apartments and upscale shops geared more to wealthy Gulf tourists and Lebanese overseas than locals. Instead of a resurgent city center, the district has become, for many, a symbol of Beirut’s post-war evils: corruption, cronyism, incompetent management of the economy. Anti-government protests, which erupted in October and resumed after the explosion, almost always start there.
Dagher and others now fear a âSolidere 2.0â scenario and its impact not only on structures but also on the people of East Beirut. Many of them had lived in this part of the capital before the civil war; those who did not own their apartments were tenants who could only stay thanks to rent controls.
âIt’s not about me. I am supported by my brothers and sisters. We are all on the same page. We know what the house means to us, âsaid Dagher, standing in front of a set of elegant white and blue Chinese plates hanging on the wall.
“But others⦠have no way to stay.” Those who have no income, who do not see the economic coherence in keeping such buildings, what will they do? said Dagher, a member of a non-profit organization that has worked for 25 years to protect and restore ancient and historic buildings in Lebanon.
âIn modern conservation, you talk about clusters,â added Mona Hallak, a fellow architect and conservation activist. âYou speak of a way of life, of a social fabric. You’re not just talking about pretty buildings. Today the problem is that there is no law; every developer can demolish. You can rest assured that not all buildings are dangerous to public safety, but they will use this pretext as they have used in the past.
A building in Gemmayzeh, Hallak said, had already been demolished for dubious motives, even as rumors abound in east Beirut that brokers are surrounding desperate owners to prey on them. On Wednesday, Abbass Mortada, the acting Minister of Culture, issued an edict banning all sales of real estate in neighborhoods affected by the explosion until restoration work was completed.
Get the latest Los Angeles Times news, surveys, analysis and more signature journalism delivered to your inbox.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.
Various groups mobilized to fight the unfettered redevelopment, with teams of volunteers assessing the structural integrity of the buildings. Earlier this week, George Saad, associate professor of civil engineering at the American University of Beirut, climbed a hill to Joelle Abou Merhi’s home in the Mar Mikhael neighborhood.
Abu Merhi, a travel agent, has lived his whole life in this house. Her mother too, who was born there after her grandfather built it around 1900, she said. Now it’s a mess: whole window frames had been catapulted from the walls; the glass creaked under the feet; the thick wooden beams that supported the ceiling of a room had warped and were now dangerously askew.
Saad walked around the building with two students, probing its walls (sandstone with plaster coating: structurally sound) and determining what repairs could be made immediately (the weakened roof required more serious intervention but was repairable). The house lacked the opulence of Dagher’s house, but Abu Merhi spoke of his loss with seething anger.
âListen, I’m not poor. We work, but we are not millionaires. ⦠Our money is inaccessible, âshe said.
She had cleaned the house in an effort to stay positive, but if she could leave the country she “wouldn’t say no,” said Abu Merhi. âWe are educated. We are fluent in three languages. I have been around the world. I know I could do it anywhere.
Dagher does not intend to leave. He sees himself in a race to make sure the funds are raised to provide short-term relief to homeowners while also offering a long-term framework to prevent a repeat of Solidere.
âWhat’s the plan? They’re going to tear everything down and build a ‘wonderful Dubai’ in its place?â He said, his voice singing sarcasm at the mention of the UAE’s glitzy desert metropolis.
“That’s why we have to go faster.”
[ad_2]