PHYSICAL APPEARANCE OF THE CITY...continued
The seventeenth century was a period during which the
construction of great monumental buildings came to a stop.
The area outside the walls of Galata between the Tunnel
and Galatasaray began to fill up. The French Embassy was
built here in 1581. Permission to build the Church of
St. Louis was issued in 1628. The streets between the
Tunnel and Galatasaray had been laid out by the end of
the seventeenth century, but the surrounding country is
known to have been vacant or devoted to cemeteries. In
the reign of Mehmet IV the Besiktas Palace became a greatly
expanded complex. The summer houses of the aristocracy,
extending in a tine along the shores of the Bosphorus
and known as yali's, were greatly increased in number
during this century.
Communication around the city was largely carried on by
water. For this reason, places where landing stages could
not be built, for example along the steep bluffs between
Uskudar and Haydarpasa, did not become thickly settled.
The Golden Horn, one of the finest natural harbors in
the world, sheltered a good many commercial establishments.
Many of the districts there today bear names of these
establish merits, such as Unkapani (Hour Warehouse), Hasir
Iskelesi (Wicker Landing), Yemis iskelesi (Fruit Landing),
and Odun Kapisi (Firewood Gate). Galata became the entrepot
for goods in transit from East to West. By the seventeenth
century the city had completely acquired its eastern character.
Because the Turkish population, possessors of a tradition
of spacious mansions surrounded by gardens and places
of worship with large courtyards, were strangers to the
ancient aesthetic traditions of classical cities. with
their boulevards and public squares, these Roman boulevards
and squares were done away with and filled up with houses.
The streets were of a width suitable for horseman and
pedestrians. A style of colorful wooden house-construction
dominated the city. All Western travelers agree in describing
the city as unrivalled in the beauty of its setting of
harbor and countryside but very dirty within.
The peaceful character of the eighteenth century Ottoman
Empire ushered in the poetic and flower centered era known
as the Lale Devri (Tulip Period), the public works of
which added to the physiognomy of the city. The imposing
architects styles of the Louis XIV and Louis XV periods
of the West were introduced to Istanbul. At Kagithane
was adorned with the Sadabad complex, begun in 1721 -
1722, of marble quays, water canals extending inland,
bridges, pools, and magnificently colorful wooden mansions.
The Golden Horn and the Bosphorus as far as Bebek were
lined with rich waterside mansions. The Grand Vizier Nevsehirli
Ibrahim Pasha introduced the painting in white or pastel
colors of these basically wooden mansions, and for ten
years the Bosphorus was turned into a veritable garden
of magnolias. Of these architectural gems of the sixteenth,
seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, not one example
survives today, with the exception of the Amcazade Yalisi
at Kanlica. Lady Mary Whortley Montagu depicts the Ayse
Sultan palace at Uskudar as extremely beautiful. During
the same period Istanbul was enriched by the monumental
fountains behind St. Sophia, at the Square of Uskudar,
and many other places.
Under
Mustafa I the last classical Turkish architectural monuments,
the great Hekimoglu Ali Pasa Camii and Library, were erected.
The first great mosques built under European influence,
Nuruosmaniye (baroque) and the Laleli Camii were added
to the architectural treasures of the city in this period.
Following upon the erection by Abdulhamit I of the mosque
of Beylerbeyi on the Bosphorus, the Yeni Valide Mosque
of Nurbanu Sultani at Uskudar, the Ayazma set upon the
summit of the hills of Uskudar by Mustafa III, and the
Selimiye Mosque built in the early nineteenth century
established a trend of building great mosques on the Asiatic
shore, which also acquired in the eighteenth century a
silhouette of domes and minarets. The development of Uskudar
toward Kadikoy occurred after Selim III, in the first
years of the nineteenth century, built the great barracks
known by his name on the site of a palace he had demolished.
At Fenerbahce, beyond, there were several lovely gardens
and palaces and a lighthouse.
Above Galata the Tunnel Street was extended to Taksim
at the end of the eighteenth century, while the slopes
of Cihangir were joined to the shores of Tophane. A photograph
presumably taken during the Crimean War shows the Taksim
Square region as completely empty and uncultivated.
The need for reform was first realized in the Ottoman
Empire of the eighteenth century, and the first reforms
were made in connection with the army. This development
gained for Istanbul a new type of building: barracks built
in the Western style. During this period there were added
to the face of the city the huge edifices of Selim at
Tophane and Uskudar, the three-storied Kalyoncu Barracks
built by Cezayirli Hasan Pasha, Vizier under Abdulhamit
I, the Topcu (Cannoneers) Barracks built at Taksim by
Halil Pasha in 1780, and the great Humbarahane Barracks
built by Selim III in Halicioglu beyond Eyup.
From the great album of the artist Melling, who lived
in Istanbul under Selim III, we can learn about all the
remaining components of the city. At the edge of the city,
the present day appearance of the heights of Topkapi Palace
was complete. On the other hand the shore by the Seraglio
was not empty as it is today. One after the other in a
row, beautiful kiosks and palaces filled up the shoreline
without a break. On the shore outside the Seraglio walls
there were several kiosks, the space between the shore
and the building complex above was occupied by gardens
and woods. Yedikule ("The Seven Towers") was
then a splendid chateau still crowned with conical roofs.
Opposite Eminonu Harbor the pure white quarriea store
of Yeni Cami rise up. In front of it ware small buildings
sheds, hundreds of rowing and sailing boats, and trees.
The Golden Horn had become thickly settled. On the Galata
shore beyond Haskoy only the waterside was inhabited.
The hillsides were forested. From Kasimpasa to Galata
the hills were one great cemetary. On the slopes of Galata
looking down on the Bosphorus and the ridges of Findikli
and Tophane, embassies had been built. Taksim and beyond
were still rural and empty. The Bosphorus developed along
the shore. Only a few villages such as Arnavutkoy and
Anadoluhisari had spread upward the hilltops.
Both in the Bosphorus and in city, many of the houses
wore built in quite a different manner from those of the
following centuries. Following the architectural pattern
of Anatolia, they had a massive and closed ground floor
with blind walls, above which were one or two wooden stories.
Only the Seraglio and the great houses had habitable,
windowed, normally fitted-out ground floors.
The famous German Marshall von Moltke, who worked with
the Turkish army under Mahmut II, the first of the great
reforming sultans, was very much concerned with the improving
of the planning of Istanbul. His Western mind began with
the need to open up arteries for traffic, and be requested
roads fourteen meters wide. But this wish was not realized.
The greatest width approved in 1843 was seven meters.
The first bridge joining the two shores of the Golden
Horn was built, only for pedestrians, by Mahmut II in
1836 the place where the Ataturk Bridge is today. Abdulmecit
I moved to the Palace of Dolmabahce on the shore, a building
finished in 1856 in the Empire style. Under the same Sultan
the bridge of Galata was built first time in 1845. In
the first years of the reign of his brother Abdulaziz
Topkapi was damaged by a fire. But the first real destruction
there was brought about by the construction in 1874 of
the Edirne-Istanbul railway. The route of the railway
was made to pass along there by the express wish of the
Sultan, and all the buildings along the shore, each more
beautiful than the next, were demolished. Thus Istanbul
lost one of the most important components of its landscape
and one of its corners passed like a dream into past history.
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