"Krunska ulica and Kotež Neimar are waiting for the status of protected spatial cultural and historical units from 2021. The documents prepared by the Institute for the Protection of Monuments of the City of Belgrade, which were approved by the competent institutions, have been sitting in some drawer in the Government of Serbia for two and a half years, which cannot make a decision on the protection of these parts of the city," the president of the Society for beautification of Vračar Aleksandar Arsenijević.
Precisely for this reason, the Society for the Beautification of Vračar launched a petition for the urgent adoption of decisions on putting these parts of the city under protection, and in order to prevent potential demolition architectural heritage of Belgrade for the sake of investor interests.
"We will continue to collect signatures for the petition online, as well as every weekend at the Kalenić market, until the new government is formed, when we will submit the petition." Since this government did not show understanding and good will to make that decision, we expect that there will be a shred of common sense in the next one," said Arsenijević from the Society for the Beautification of Vračar.
According to him, people who love their region and want to somehow preserve the identity of that region for future generations responded to sign the petition.
"Onslaught of Investors"
"Neimar is an example of an architectural entity that ceases to be so because of the onslaught of investors. There are parts of Vračar where you can experiment in terms of construction, such as for example on Čuburi. However, it is easier to come to an agreement with one owner of a villa and destroy a building that enjoyed previous protection, than to enter into negotiations with several owners of Udžeri on small plots of land in Čubur," says Arsenijević.
He adds that he was recently accused by the administration of the municipality of Vračar of not allowing the owners of pre-war villas to sell their houses to investors.
"The point is that whoever buys a villa should maintain it and bring it to a better condition, not tear it down." If something like that were allowed in the rest of the world, Prague, Vienna and other cities would not look the way they do today and would not be visited nearly as much," explained Arsenijević.
In 2020, the previous protection for the mentioned parts of Vračar expired and since then, he says, they have been the target of unscrupulous investors, who came up with the idea of demolishing the entire neighborhood between Krunska, Kneginja Zorka, Njegoševa and Smiljanićeva streets. That's how they bought one of the villas on the very corner, which has been constantly collapsing ever since.
"That's where we found the understanding of the city government and we saved the neighborhood, but despite that, investors tried on several occasions to "push" the ten-story building project on that stretch," says Arsenijević, adding that it is not certain that it was definitely abandoned.
The excavators win
In recent years, many modern high-rise buildings, despite the opposition of the citizens, have gained priority over the villas that stood there for a century and testified to the development of Belgrade following the example of other European metropolises.
Thus, in the previous three and a half years, after the protection expired, the pre-war mansions in the streets of International Brigade, Janko Veselionvić, Nikolaj Krasnov, Resavska, Đorđe WeifertA and other streets of the smallest Belgrade municipality disappeared.
"The municipality of Vračar is apparently betraying investors in agreement demolition permits, past the Institute for the Protection of Monuments," Neda Maletić from the Society for the Protection of Neymar tells "Vreme".
Due to the demolition of five houses in the streets of Đorđe Vajfert and Janko Veselinović in Neimar, the Institute for the Protection of Cultural Monuments of the City of Belgrade filed a criminal complaint against the investor, Maletićeva explains, adding that the company headed by her did the same against the management of the Municipality of Vračar.
"Under the pretext that the statics are bad and that the villas are collapsing by themselves, the municipality issues permits for demolition, and we no longer have any insight into it, before the excavators do their work," said Maletic.
In addition to the destruction of cultural heritage, the quality of life of the residents of Vračar is also impaired, because these are narrow streets and infrastructure designed for one- or two-story villas, emphasized Neda Maletić.
A street that still resists
The development of Krunska Street began in the second half of the 19th century, when the expansion of the city towards the east began. It originally extended to today's Beogradska Street and was an informal extension of the palace complex.
The former vice consul of the United States of America, Edward Maxwell Grant, owned the plots of land between today's Krunska and Njegoševa streets, and he made sure that the whole neighborhood sprung up on the model of English cities, which was adopted in the urban plan from the end of the 19th century, when this area became part of the city .
Krunsko got its present shape, with cross streets that intersect at right angles, in 1906, when the central row of trees that makes it recognizable was formed. Some of the most significant architectural creations sprouted here in the interwar period following the line established at the time, according to which wide sidewalks were left facing the courtyards of the villas.
The most famous building in Krunska Street, Genčić's villa, which today houses the Nikola Tesla Museum, dates from that period. It was built according to the project of Dragiša Brašovan, and for the merchant and retired minister, Đorđe Genčić. It perhaps best testifies to the social milieu that lived near the city center.
Due to war destruction during the Second World War, some of the villas gave way to high-rise buildings that were part of a completely different housing policy, but still somehow fit in.
By the way, the street changed its name more than ten times throughout its history and on several occasions bore the current one, Krunska, after the symbol of royal rule.
