page_title: Toma T. Socolescu
section_title: Legacy
hierarchical_section_title: Toma T. Socolescu / Career / Legacy
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: Ion Ionescu-Quintus, avocat homme politique et collectionneur d'art, au manoir de Toma T. Socolescu à Pauleşti, Judeţul Prahova, Roumanie. Ce bâtiment n'a pas été construit par Toma T. Socolescu. Il est la propriété de la famille Toma T. Socolescu à ce jour (20/10/2009) Nous sommes les descendants et uniques ayant-droits de toute l'oeuvre de Toma T. Socolescu (mort en 1960 à Bucarest). English: Ion Ionescu-Quintus, Lawyer, politician and art collector in the manor of Toma T. Socolescu in Pauleşti, Judeţul Prahova, Romania. This building has not been created by Toma T. Socolescu. It is today (20/10/2009) the property of the Toma T. Socolescu family We are the only heirs and descendants of Toma T. Socolescu (died in 1960 in Bucharest) and therefore owner of all his intellectual rights.
context_page_description: Toma T. Socolescu was a Romanian architect. He was one of the influencers of Romanian architecture from the early 20th century through World War II.
context_section_description: Toma T. Socolescu is still studied at the Ion Mincu University of Architecture and Urbanism and is still considered as an architectural eminence in Romania.
  Until recently no reference to Socolescu was visible in the streets of Ploiești or the capital. A Technical High School in Ploiești is named after his father, while a Technical College for architecture and public works in Bucharest is named after his uncle. A street is named after his father in Ploiești. However, since 21 October 2010 and the 50th anniversary of his death, he has come out of oblivion. Other ceremonies were held from 2009 to 2011, including the installation of a bust in front of the Central Market Hall of Ploiești and the naming of the adjacent park, for the architect. On 29 September 2010, Socolescu was posthumously awarded the title of Honorary Citizen of the City of Ploiești.
  any of his works were destroyed partly by the American bombardments of 1943-44, that were especially harsh in Ploiești, and more were razed by Nicolae Ceaușescu's policy of systematization that removed all traces of the soul of Romanian architecture. Many surviving properties were returned to him in a degraded state, such as his manor house in Păulești, or his building in Ploiești, which was disfigured during the 1950s.
  His house of Păulești is on the regional list of Historic Monuments, after 45 years of neglect by the state. Built by another architect with no link to the Socolescu style, it was returned to the heiress in a much damaged state. Stripped of its land, and of its ornamental garden (organized by Socolescu), it lost most of its original beauty and harmony. The estate was sold by the family in August 2010.
  His Ploiești apartment house suffered badly during 1944. It was nationalized in 1950 and disfigured by a rehabilitation. It was partially returned to the family in 2006.
  Most of the finest edifices of Ploiești, including several built by the Socolescus, were demolished in the 1970s and 1980s, under pretext of structural weakness due to the earthquakes of 1940 and 1977.
  After 1949 Socolescu devoted his spare time to his memoirs. He continued to work on the project until 1960. In 2004, after more than fifty years of neglect by various Romanian institutions, his family published the first part of his memoirs called Amintiri (the only part he had finished) which covers the period from his birth up to 1924. The Fresco of architects who have worked in Romania in the modern era from 1800 to 1925, a far more important work, was completed in 1955 and also published in 2004 by his family. His book dedicated to the architecture in Ploiești, Arhitectura în Ploești, studiu istoric, published in 1937, was recognized by the Romanian Academy.
  The first page of a small booklet he wrote in French in 1941 sums up his credo:
          La puissance créatrice de notre peuple est complètement prouvée par son bel art populaire plusieurs fois millénaire ainsi que par l'architecture plus récente de nos églises, habitations princières et voïvodales.
          La Création étant le but suprême d'un peuple, c'est par notre apport personnel que nous justifierons notre existence de demain.
          En Architecture, il ne faut pas à tout prix rechercher le nouveau et nous garder des formules sacro-saintes, comme par exemple: il faut être de son temps. L'architecte ne peut rester en arrière, il a au contraire pour mission d'entraîner ses contemporains dans sa marche vers le progrès.
          L'architecture ne peut être internationale, elle doit être conservatrice et suivre évolutivement la chaine des traditions d'un peuple. La construction et la décoration, formant l'une le squelette, l'autre l'enveloppe, doivent se compléter et satisfaire aux deux exigences impérieuses: la logique et le sentiment.
          Un grand penseur européen H. Keyserling, croit que notre peuple est appelé à ressusciter l'art byzantin, qui est à la base de notre Église et de notre architecture et que par une reprise de nos traditions d'art, de l'esprit duquel a jailli l'art de notre passé, nous devons diriger nos pas vers une ren
caption: His friend Ion Ionescu-Quintus at the Păulești manor, around 1930.
exif: {"Image Software": "Picasa 3.0", "Image ExifOffset": "50", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "1552", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "2232", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0210", "Interoperability InteroperabilityIndex": "", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "150", "EXIF ImageUniqueID": "718957e4d62ff48a4ef335b42a0f8515"}