Do we have to wait for overseas protests so that we get our act together? asks Samir Raafat* To date, laws and regulations defining a historic building or landmark remain equivocal, which makes it all the easier for developers to pursue their mission to fill up the city with concrete structures. Moreover, the absence of a Commission for Historical and Architectural Preservation (CHAP) is translated into the accelerated disappearance of historic neighborhoods and sites across the nation. Which is why many are demanding that our government-appointed city mayors actively intervene to preserve our historic neighborhoods. Take the neighborhood of Garden City, for example, or what's left of it. Here's a story that can be told elsewhere in Cairo. It is the story of an upper middle-class elite who sought to balance their middle-class sensitivities with their patriotic political convictions. The last Ottomans in Egypt nicknamed it Beyoglou (sons of beys) a reminder of a comparable Istanbul district on the shores of the Bosphorous, where the privileged dreamt of a modern independent Turkey. While Beyoglou's landmarks are still around, Garden City's are disappearing. The story of Garden City was also the story of a state in the making. Architects, musicians, politicians, educators, ideologues, judges and many of the most prominent figures of the pre-republican era lived there, leaving their ephemeral mark on Egyptian society as they walked along its shady winding streets admiring the district's eclectic architecture. These, of course, were the days when 'elected' state administrators determined municipal zones, commercial areas, density of construction, use of materials and height of buildings. Garden City was designed just as new ideas were spreading, influenced by non-traditional town planners. It was shaped by turn of the century architects whose outlook was consciously modern. This is why the term 'heritage' in Garden City is intimately linked with both history and architecture. But over the past four decades, Garden City has not been preserved. Property owners, along with a corrupt municipality, discovered that there are big bucks to be made. In the absence of any forms of regional planning boards or CHAPS protecting landmark buildings and villas, 80- year-old homes built in the art deco or international style, were transformed into primitive dwellings, their gardens giving way to ugly, multistory, high-priced residential structures. Numerous homes, of great historical and architectural value were razed. The palatial home of Adly Yeken Pasha, a leading political figure and sometime prime minister, was removed to make way for the Four Seasons Hotel complex which stands like a giant barrier forever separating the rest of Garden City from the Nile. The home of Youssef Cattaui Pasha built in the 1920s with gothic turrets in the Victorian-folly style at the corner of Ibrahim Pasha Street and al-Saraya al Kobra, succumbed to the bulldozer, with an eyesore 15 story building replacing it. Doctor Naguib Mafouz Pasha's villa on Tolombat Street, with its spacious balconies set back from what was once a very quiet tree-lined street, was taken over by a bank which immediately corrupted its structure so that it is unrecognizable today. The palazzo across from it, built by a princess and leased to America's ambassador during WW2, was replaced with fourteen unsavory buildings surrounded by the tiniest of sidewalks, thus taking full advantage of building percentages while the municipality looks the other way. The list is long, the crimes far too abundant. Architectural terrorism is alive and well in our historic neighborhoods. But in light of the demolitions that have already taken place, can the destruction be stopped? Apparently, growing community awareness and effective use of media has yet to produce results. Things are moving very slowly. The question now stands, will this be yet another example where we have to wait for overseas protests so that we get our act together? Or are we expected to solicit the assistance of some multinational citizens group? It was, after all, an eleventh hour intervention by the UNESCO that saved our Giza plateau from having a four lane highway zigzagging between the pyramids. * The writer is a journalist and author of "Cairo, the Glory Years", 2003.
