Belgrad 8

The Whole Building

The history Of Villa Belgrad8

The most significant in relation to the history of the building, Josse Allar and Eugene Baelde, were two bankers from Belgium, the former being the director of the Royal Belgian Mint.
Their names are linked to several companies and investments in Romania in those years.
A few references to the second owner by his name Adriano Gattorno (A.L.Catorno) so mentioned in the sale-purchase deeds and also considered as the first owner.
Adriano was a steamship agent and merchant from Braila, and in 1920 he was a member of the Board of Directors of the Roman-Dutch Indigestion Society "Lloydul Roman". For this property does not appear as a residence, most likely it was purchased for real estate investment purposes.
The next owners, Elize and Anghel Demetrian, also owned the property for a short period of time. 
The bankruptcy of the commercial firm that Anghel owned with his brother made him lose, in 1926, by auctioning a villa he had in Calimanesti resort and probably led him to sell the villa at 8 Belgrad Street.
Jaques and Lucretia Axenfeld were the last owners of the property before nationalization. Jaques was in turn an associate member, sometimes with functions in the management of various interwar companies.
Thus these characters become representative of a society with a changing status, belonging to a relatively homogeneous environment of small merchants and industrialists eager to accumulate capital.
For them, taking ownership of a building in a select housing estate was either a simple real estate investment, or it was done out of the need to increase their social status.

Belgrad8 is part of an important history of Bucharest not long gone, anytime you can be part of this story.