page_title: Eleftherias Square
section_title: After the Great Fire
hierarchical_section_title: Eleftherias Square / History / After the Great Fire
caption_attribution_description: English: Proposal for the Central Post and Telegram Office which would have taken the place of the current Eleftherias Square in Thessaloniki, which was never built.
context_page_description: Eleftherias Square is a central square in downtown Thessaloniki, Greece. It takes its name from the Young Turk Revolution, which began in the square in 1908. The square is currently a car park, but a public competition was launched by the Municipality of Thessaloniki in 2013 to select a design for its redevelopment into a park. Construction will start in 2018 at a cost of €5.1 million.
  The square is bound by Mitropoleos street to the north, Nikis Avenue and the old waterfront of Thessaloniki to the south, Ionos Dragoumi street to the west and Venizelou street to the east. It is trapezoidal in shape and covers an area of approximately 5,087 square metres. The square is surrounded by banks, insurance companies, and offices.
  It is of particular importance to the history of the Jews in Thessaloniki. Thousands of male Jews were gathered in the square on 11 July 1942 and publicly tortured and humiliated before being registered for forced labour by the city's Nazi German occupiers.
context_section_description: The Great Thessaloniki Fire of 1917 destroyed the original character of the square, with only the Stein Building, an Austrian department store, being spared. Because Thessaloniki was to be a planned city after the Fire the Government had issued a ban on reconstructions in any of the burnt-out areas of the city before the new plan could be finalised. The importance of Eleftherias Square to the life of Thessaloniki is illustrated by the fact that special Royal Decrees were issued, allowing establishments such as Café Flokas to be rebuilt temporarily.
  The redesign commission, headed by French architect Ernest Hébrard, sought to replace the square with the regional offices of the Hellenic Post, Telegraph, and Telephony Service (Greek: Ἑλληνικὴ Ταχυδρομικὴ, Τηλεγραφηματικὴ, καὶ Τηλεφωνικὴ Ὑπηρεσία), as the square had become obsolete after the design of the nearby Aristotelous Square. Banks and other buildings would be constructed around the public building, named TTT House (Greek: Μέγαρον ΤΤΤ), and the waterfront promenade would be extended to provide some further public space. A small new square would be created there, called Post Office Square (French: Place de la Poste). Hébrard was not the only one to submit proposals for the design of the TTT building; Greek architect Marinos Delladetsimas also produced a proposal, with obvious influences from Hébrard's Byzantine Revival style.
  The plans were largely not carried out, although reconstruction began in the late 1920s and early 1930s. In 1921 the first plan-compliant permit was issued, while construction on a building housing the National Bank of Greece on the northwester corner of the square, as well as a building housing the Ionian Bank on the opposite side of the road, was started in the late 1920s. The National Bank of Greece opened in 1933, but the design was modified so as to also house the Bank of Greece, which had been established in 1928. Work on the foundations for TTT House commenced in 1931, but was hampered by the discovery of the sea wall which had been demolished in the late 1800s. This created major structural issues, and the project stalled and was abandoned. With the occupation of the city by Nazi Germany on 9 April 1941, the building of the Ionian Bank was requisitioned by the German authorities and turned into the local Ortskommandantur, the headquarters of the occupying authority. The Ionian Bank later became the Ionian and Popular Bank, which is now Alpha Bank; it still occupies the building.
caption: Hébrard's proposal for the TTT offices. It was never built and the empty lot became the current car park.
exif: {}