The architects Alexandru Zaharia and Ion Giurgea

Alexandru Zaharia

Alexandru Zaharia was born in Brăila on 18 January 1892, the son of the Jewish merchant Maier Zaharia. In the registers of the Corps of Architects he appears as “Zachary Alexandru”.¹ He sat the preliminary examination at the Higher Technical School in Berlin in August 1914. He received his architect’s diploma on 3 August 1918 from the Royal Bavarian Higher Technical School in Munich. His diploma was recognised in Romania in 1933, and in October of the same year he joined the Corps of Architects.¹

The architect Mădălin Ghigeanu, who devoted his doctorate to the Mediterranean movement, considers him “without question, one of the most important representatives of the Mediterranean movement”.¹ Radio România Internațional calls him “the flagship architect of the Mediterranean”.² He also designed, however, in the Art Deco style, in French eclecticism and in Italian classicism.¹

His works in Bucharest include:¹

• the small Adina Woroniecka palazzo on Atena Street (now Tache Ionescu), 1929–1930, and the Woroniecka Palace at 7 Șoseaua Kiseleff, 1940;
• the buildings at 4 and 6 Piața Cantacuzino, 1933–1934;
• the Scanavi Villa on Aleea Modrogan, 1934, now demolished;
• the villa at 20 Pitar Moș Street, 1936;
• the Gafencu house, 1936–1938;
• the Soepkez house, 1938, now the Museum of Recent Art;
• the Royal Palace at Scroviștea, begun in 1938, left unfinished and demolished in 1959.

His career was one of the most disputed of the period. He was regarded as the protégé of Elena Lupescu and of the royal camarilla. In September 1937, the Corps of Architects put him on a list of people “suspected of holding false diplomas”. His citizenship was reviewed, and it was granted to him again in June 1938.¹ Some colleagues mocked his style by calling it “the Zuckerman style”. Ghigeanu reads these attacks as professional envy and “virulent antisemitism (typical of the period)”.¹

In October 1940, Zaharia left for Portugal. In 1946 he emigrated to Brazil, and after 1953 he settled in Paris. There he built eight modernist buildings: seven in Paris and one in Cannes. He died in Paris in the mid-1970s.¹

Ion Giurgea

Ion V. Giurgea was born in Tecuci on 18 April 1903. His father, Vasile, was the president of the Tecuci Court.³ He graduated from the Academy of Architecture in Bucharest in 1930, and in 1933 he received his architect’s licence.³ He died in 1959.⁴

His work is dominated by the Mediterranean influence, but it also includes neo-Romanian and Art Deco buildings. His archive holds more than 4,000 drawings and more than 200 identified projects.⁴ His works include:⁴⁵

• the villas of Gheorghe and Emanoil Tătărescu (Emanoil’s villa, on Intrarea Armașului, is dated 1937);
• the Leonida building on Bulevardul Magheru;
• the Carol Gagel house in Cotroceni, completed by him from 1937;
• the Music Salon of the Romanian Athenaeum;
• the National Theatre in Tecuci.

In June 2026, the publisher Editura IGLOO published the monograph Arhitect Ion Giurgea. O monografie de arhitectură [Architect Ion Giurgea. An architectural monograph], by Mădălin Ghigeanu. The book has 240 pages and a preface by Prof. Sorin Vasilescu.⁵⁴

The Zaharia–Giurgea partnership (1934–1937)

Between 1934 and 1937, the two worked together in a professional partnership. Ghigeanu found it attested “in a document signed by both of them”.⁶ Their joint office was at 4 Piața Cantacuzino, in a building designed by Zaharia in 1933.⁶³ Together they signed two known works:¹

• the Tătărescu House, which received its building permit in 1935;
• the St. Vincent de Paul Sanatorium on Bulevardul Aviatorilor, now the C. I. Parhon Hospital, begun in 1936 and completed by Giurgea in 1939.

The design of the Tătărescu House

The design of the house at 19 Polonă Street “received its building permit in 1935 and was signed by the architect Alexandru Zaharia in collaboration with the architect Ion Giurgea”. The beneficiary of the works was Arethia Tătărescu.⁶ The permit file shows how the roles were divided: “The first [version] is signed by Alexandru Zaharia, who brings a general concept … in the next phase the design becomes much more elaborate and is carried out by the architect Ioan Giurgea”. The portal at the entrance to the Prime Minister’s office was Giurgea’s idea.⁶

Ghigeanu describes the house as “a Mediterranean-type design of Hispanic influence with neo-Romanian elements” and counts it “among the first designs of this kind”.⁶ The neo-Romanian elements can be seen in several places:

• in the treatment of the entrance portals;
• in the portico at the entrance to the office, which “we find again at the monasteries of Moldavia”;
• in the two slender columns on the main façade, which are treated differently;
• in the apse that houses the fireplace made by Milița Petrașcu. The architect G. M. Cantacuzino soon took up the same solution for Nae Ionescu’s villa.⁶

Ghigeanu describes the house as “relatively small, but inside extraordinarily well proportioned”. Its plan, floor by floor:⁶

• Entresol: the Prime Minister’s office and the kitchen.
• Ground floor: a living hall opening onto the garden and a glazed dining room with two small salons. The ceiling of the salon has exposed beams, in the Spanish manner (vigas).
• First floor: four bedrooms.

The doors and the parquet are of solid oak, and the door ironmongery is of patinated brass. The landscaped garden has stone paving that “recalls the courtyards of Balcic”.⁶ The builder of the house is said to have been Aurel Ioanovici, with whom Zaharia often worked. This information, however, comes from the memoirs of Gheorghe Jurgea-Negrilești and not from a document of the building site.¹

The house is sometimes described as “Art Deco” or dated to “1930”. The 1935 building permit and the specialist analysis place it in the Mediterranean movement, with neo-Romanian elements. The monument is entered in the List of Historic Monuments under the code B-II-m-B-19435.⁷

The Mediterranean style in interwar Bucharest

The Mediterranean movement dominated villa building in Bucharest and Constanța between 1930 and the end of the 1940s. At first it was called “mauro-florentino-brâncovenesc” (Moorish-Florentine-Brâncovenesc).² It came from California and Florida, “through magazines and film”. Its origins lay in the Spanish Colonial Revival and neo-Mudéjar styles.²⁸

Houses in this style can be recognised by a few features:²⁸

• stucco or calcio vecchio render;
• barrel-tiled roofs with gentle pitches;
• arcades and heraldic decoration;
• work with Italian craftsmen.

The first villa of this kind in Bucharest is considered to be that of the architect Gheorghe Simotta, on Dealul Patriarhiei (Patriarchate Hill).¹ Estimates put the number of buildings in this style at 470–500, designed by some 43 Romanian architects.⁶⁸

Polonă Street is part of a protected built-up area, formed on the former Ioanid subdivision.⁹ Behind the house, the Callimachi subdivision, on Intrarea Armașului, brings together Mediterranean villas from the mid-1930s. Among them is the villa of Emanoil Tătărescu, the Prime Minister’s brother, also designed by Ion Giurgea.⁶¹⁰

Notes and sources

1. Mădălin Ghigeanu, Anca Rotar, „Schiță a unei epoci controversate a României interbelice: arhitectul Alexandru Zaharia” [Sketch of a controversial period of interwar Romania: the architect Alexandru Zaharia], IGLOO, 12 June 2025. igloo.ro ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹

2. „Stilul mediteranean în arhitectura bucureșteană” [The Mediterranean style in Bucharest architecture], Radio România Internațional. rri.ro ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

3. „Ion Giurgea” [Ion Giurgea], Arhiva de Arhitectură. arhivadearhitectura.ro ↩ ↩² ↩³

4. „Proiectul Arhiva Ion V. Giurgea: redescoperirea unui arhitect interbelic” [The Ion V. Giurgea Archive project: rediscovering an interwar architect], modernism.ro, 23 June 2026. modernism.ro ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

5. Mădălin Ghigeanu, Arhitect Ion Giurgea. O monografie de arhitectură [Architect Ion Giurgea. An architectural monograph], Editura IGLOO, Bucharest, 2026. libris.ro ↩ ↩²

6. Interview with architect Mădălin Ghigeanu about the Tătărescu House, B365, 8 December 2022. b365.ro ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰

7. „Lista monumentelor istorice din București, sector 1” [List of historic monuments in Bucharest, Sector 1], Romanian-language Wikipedia (based on the Ministry of Culture’s List of Historic Monuments). ro.wikipedia.org ↩

8. Mădălin Ghigeanu, research project on the Mediterranean movement, Anuala de Arhitectură, 2023. anuala.ro ↩ ↩² ↩³

9. „Expoziție de palate prețioase pe Polonă” [An exhibition of precious palaces on Polonă], B365, 30 November 2025. b365.ro ↩

10. Interview with architect Mădălin Ghigeanu about the Tătărescu family, B365. b365.ro ↩