Motivated by what I had read about a demolition of a mid-war house at 27 Laskaridou Street, in Kallithea, I went last Sunday to photograph on site. I had seen the house from pictures and from the car window when I had passed by recently. It had appeared to me as a stately house of pre-war modernism set freely in a large, dense garden. But when I got there, the clouds of dust revealed only a bare plot of land, the house had already been demolished and with it another page of Kallithea of the interwar period had gone.
Kallithea had been a suburb. We all know how distant this era is, but it’s a shame that almost nothing now reminds us of its good times. It is certainly a prosperous district, with a good market and good transport. But most of its fine houses, civil and popular, have been demolished. Impersonal apartment buildings create a feeling of suffocation here as well. Passing from Agios Panton to the side of Kallithea between Theseos and Syngrou, in quiet and wide streets, scattered remnants of the old life recall another measure of aesthetics and scale. That petty and middle-class average of the 1910-1960s, an average that was underestimated and ignored.
In Agioi Panton at number 10, there is still a small house, which I read is preserved. It is closed and on the side it has a gate with the initials I. P. that leads to the courtyard and the main entrance. I bent down to see this microcosm and in the background I was surprised to see rose bushes in full bloom. It is a house typical of that simple, stately, romantic style of the districts. A house that today we would call eclectic or late neoclassical, but which in its time, around 1920, was just a house. A house for a family and around it would have other such houses and many plots, which at such a time would be full of wild flowers. I stood opposite to weigh it with my eyes, to feel it and to understand it, this small house on Agios Panton street, which radiated in its silence moderation and calmness and dignity. A niche between the two windows organizes the facade into harmonious parts. The windows have Doric pilasters, flanked by plaster shields reminiscent of the caduceus of Hermes, and crowned by a garland on the trigo. A small house that teaches us harmony and dignity. Cornflowers with wild grasses complete the coronation.
I crossed again through the small street of Leonidas Spartiatou and again saw the beautiful house of Kanaris and Demosthenos, all still in place. As in Menelaus and Demosthenes. Menelaus and Herakleous, there are two atmospheric houses left, now empty. The 1950s corner and the adjacent ground floor, interwar. Together, side by side, they give us the scale of old Kallithea. But a little further down, I stopped at another corner house, also from the 1950s, a small house of the time, which, as stated, is the property of the Athens Bar Association.
He is in Menelaus and Gryparis and I stopped short because he was speaking with his silence. It’s post-war, but now, how far away are the 1950s? I was more attracted by its color palette, the deep red on the walls and the sky blue of the covered veranda, as well as the base with the red stone of Hymettos. An aura of warm terracotta enveloped the house and a sense of solid urban culture. The charming history of Kallithea is part of the history of Athens, with all its contradictions and social contrasts. What will the same route be like ten years from now?
