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Pontic Greek Refugee Housing in Athens to be Restored

The historical housing built in the 1930s in Athens to accommodate Greek refugees from Asia Minor are to get new life as they will be restored in a three-year redevelopment project.
The “Prosfygika” (προσφυγικά) – as they are called – have been standing for decades on Alexandras Avenue, right across from the Panathinaikos soccer field. They are highly symbolic buildings, for many reasons, as their facades still bear the bullet holes from the December 1944 gunfights between British soldiers and Greek guerrillas.
The eight apartment blocks were constructed in two phases, from 1933 to 1936. The two front blocks of flats on Alexandras Avenue consist of 24 apartments each, and the remaining six blocks have 30 apartments each with five entrances, totaling 228 apartments. All the apartments are 40 square meters (approximately 430 square feet).
According to an architectural study conducted in 2011, the buildings are an example of the Bauhaus movement. They are modern constructions based on rationality, standardization, cheap cost, line purity and austerity. Their size represents the minimum needed for a four-member family of the time, namely 40 square meters.
The Prosfygika are sturdy buildings which have withstood the test of time, surviving not only earthquakes but WWII as well. Other apartment blocks built around the same time have either collapsed or are about to become ruins. But the stone walls and solid construction of the Prosfygika guarantee that they will be standing tall for decades to come.
The refugee community was actually vibrant and bustling until the end of the 1990s. By that time, their residents were mostly descendants of the original refugees.
Architect Dimitris Eftaxiopoulos was born there in 1955, in the apartment that his grandmother had been lucky enough to be able to buy from the state. She was one of the fortunate refugees who had won a type of lottery enabling her to buy an apartment there after she came to Greece as a Pontic refugee in the 1930s.
Eftaxiopoulos spoke to the Athens Macedonian News Agency (AMNA) using high praise to describe his dwelling – which he also uses as an office after he connected two apartments – and recalling his life of over six decades there.
“It was a special community in those years,” Eftaxiopoulos said. “First of all, there was a lot of people. Imagine 228 apartments with four people each. The images I have from my childhood are frequent house-to-house visits, food exchanges, a lot of play on the dirt paths, makeshift skates.”

The architect said that by the end of the 1990s, the government at the time decided to demolish the refugee apartments and turn the land, comprising almost 14.5 acres, into a leisure park.
The residents found themselves divided after the government offered to buy the apartments. Some could not imagine their lives away from the places, however humble, where they and their ancestors had been born. The others saw the place decaying beyond salvaging, and decided to sell their apartments to the state.
The owners who stubbornly refused to sell numbered 51; the other 177 apartment owners sold their homes to the Greek state. Once vacated in the early 2000s, anarchists and migrants began squatting in the empty apartments and within a decade the once-bustling home to thousands was in a state of dilapidation.
Today, the refugee apartments are about to be restored as part of the Athens Redevelopment Project. According to the plan, the property is to keep its historical significance, with one of the buildings facing Alexander Avenue to retain the bullet holes from December 1944 in its facade.
As for usage, the apartments will be allocated for social housing such as for beneficiaries of rent subsidies, refugees, students who excel, students working on their PhDs. Other apartments will serve as museums portraying the lives of the Greek refugees from Asia Minor.
Nikos Belavilas, the president of Athens Redevelopment, told AMNA that the project is not an easy one because there has been no equivalent endeavor undertakenin the past. Several state agencies, as well as local government and private institutions, will be involved in its implementation and operation. He estimates that the project will be completed in three years.
Source: AMNA

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