NEWS

2 Alexandras refugee blocks to be spared

Only two of the once distinguished – but now sorely dilapidated – refugee housing blocks built in the 1930s on Alexandras Avenue, central Athens, are to be preserved under plans to create a public park in the area, government officials have told Kathimerini. The remaining six of the three-story, ocher-colored blocks will be knocked down, creating space for a park stretching from Alexandras Avenue, opposite the Panathinaikos football ground, to the Elpis hospital. The eight buildings were designed by architects Cimon Laskaris and Dimitris Kyriakos in the spirit of the Bauhaus-inspired modernist movement. According to Giorgos Zygoyiannis, head of the State Real Estate Company (KED), so far over 150 of the 228 apartments in the six blocks have been purchased from their owners – the descendants of Greeks expelled from Turkey following the 1919-22 Greco-Turkish war.

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