Saviour of Romania’s churches
As a fifth of Romania’s capital was destroyed, razed by bulldozers and wrecking balls that sometimes erased all traces of a building overnight, the residents of Bucharest developed a new term for the mutilation of their city in the early 1980s. The massive redevelopment project was dubbed Ceausima, a portmanteau that evoked the name of communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu and the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.
As the demolition got under way, Eugeniu Iordachescu, an engineering professor who also worked for the city government, found himself drawn to a small Orthodox church named Schitul Maicilor, or the Nuns’ Hermitage. Built about 1726, it was one of many churches headed for destruction, and ‘‘a jewel that had to be saved no matter the cost’’, he later said.
Puzzled by how to rescue the building, he racked his brain for months until, as he put it, ‘‘God enlightened me’’.
Using a system inspired by ‘‘the waiter who carries glasses on a tray without spilling a drop’’, he devised a method in which a concrete ‘‘tray’’ was placed under the buildings, the church was lifted with hydraulic jacks, and winches and electric trolleys were used to roll it along a set of rails. Like a train slowly making its way down the tracks, the church was moved about 250 metres in 1982.
Iordachescu, who has died aged 89, became known as ‘‘the engineer of heaven’’ and Romania’s ‘‘guardian angel of churches’’ for rolling nearly 30 buildings – including a dozen churches, a bank, a hospital and several apartment buildings, complete with gas and water lines – to safety.
Iordachescu’s work occurred as Ceausescu instituted a nationwide redevelopment project known as systematisation. Inspired in part by a trip to North Korea, the communist leader sought to modernise Romania by rebuilding entire villages and towns, installing drab apartment blocks and, in Bucharest, erecting a colossal palace named the House of the Republic, now home to the country’s parliament.
Since coming to power in 1965, Ceausescu had tolerated but maintained a strict control on the Romanian Orthodox Church, whose leaders had a cozy relationship with the regime and listed Ceausescu’s birthday on the church calendar. With systematisation, the dictator made relatively little effort to spare church buildings and sometimes seemed to target them directly. Iordachescu later counted 29 churches and other religious structures that were demolished as part of Ceausima.
‘‘The sight of a church bothered Ceausescu,’’ Alexandru Budisteanu, the former chief architect of Bucharest, said. ‘‘It didn’t matter if they demolished or moved it, as long as it was no longer in sight.’’
For Iordachescu, the churches were sources of religious and historic significance, centuriesold community centres that offered solace in a city that was increasingly devoid of colour, charm and links to the past. One of the city’s oldest buildings, the Mihai Voda Monastery, was built in the 1590s and shifted about 300m.
Another structure, the Synodal Palace, Eugeniu Iordachescu
engineer b November, 1929 d January 4, 2019
weighed 9000 tonnes, and was lifted on to rails and moved a few metres each day before settling into place in the shadow of a tall apartment building. Iordachescu’s team finished the job in subzero temperatures to meet a deadline from the state. He was forced to demolish a portion of it after Ceausescu’s wife, Elena, insisted it was still visible from the street.
Nonetheless, the government paid for each of the relocation projects – perhaps allowing them to go forward, Iordachescu once suggested, because of critical news coverage in the West. ‘‘When I see the churches today,’’ he said later, ‘‘I still can’t believe it.’’
Iordachescu was born in the eastern Romanian city of Braila. Sources vary on the precise date. He was married and had two sons.
Iordachescu continued his teaching and engineering work in the years after the Romanian Revolution, which concluded in December 1989 with the execution of the Ceausescus and a grisly announcement on Romanian national radio: ‘‘Oh, what wonderful news on this Christmas evening. The Antichrist is dead.’’
At the time, Iordachescu was still wrapping up his final relocation project, ensuring the 200-year-old St Stephen’s Church arrived at its new home unscathed. – Washington Post