After many years of efforts and thanks to her initiative Academy of Lyrical Art Maria Callas and to the insistence of its president, Vassos Papantoniou, for the creation of an artistic beehive for young people, the reconstruction studies were presented yesterday building at 61 Patision Streetwhere she lived Maria Callas for eight years, by the architectural office NPL Architects (Nikolaos Lazaridis, Ismini Dimopoulou) in the presence of the mayor of Athens Haris Doukas.
The interventions of the architects will be as little as possible, as they themselves said, since the aim is to preserve the outer shell of the building and to restore the missing elements. The study includes an architectural proposal that shapes the interior spaces according to the building program, providing for classrooms, event rooms and offices, in a building with a total area of 1,800 sq.m.
The building, known as Papaleonardo apartment building, was a pioneering construction for its time, the work of the architect Constantinos Kitsikis, supervised by the civil engineer Andreas Drakopoulos. Built in 1925, it is one of the first buildings where the principle of stacked houses was applied. According to the architect’s own opinion, the architecture of the facade represents the period 1921-1932 and is an example of the evolution of this type of architecture in Athens.
In 1937, after her parents’ separation, Maria Kallas came to Athens and lived with her mother and her older sister Hyacinthi in the Papaleonardo apartment building until 1945, when she left again for New York. That is why and in the collective memory of the city, the apartment building was recorded as “the house where Callas lived”.
In 1950, the building became the property of the Naval Disarmament Fund (NAF) and in April 1980 the fund requested its demolition. On May 6, 1981, at the KSNM meeting, the issue of its designation was raised for the first time and finally in 1989 it was unanimously declared a historical preserved monument. However, the adventures of the Papaleonardo apartment building did not stop there. In 1999, an earthquake created cracks in the building, while in 2003, during an occupation, a fire broke out and the building was abandoned, while its doors and windows were sealed. Finally, in February 2018, the house of Maria Callas was assigned to the company for the Academy of Lyrical Art Maria Callas with a new contract signed with EFKA, to which ownership of the property had passed. Before starting the projects that are now underway, members of the working group collected historical information and data to document the design and construction choices of the design, essentially aiming to reconstruct the “file” of the original studies, a record of which is not preserved in the relevant urban planning office.
According to the schedule, two years are needed to complete the project and its budget is around 5.5 million euros. The implementing body of the project is the company “Redevelopment of Public Spaces SA”.
