The Turkish State Railways General Headquarters Building ( tr, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti Devlet Demiryolları Genel Müdürlük Binası) houses the general headquarters of the

Turkish State Railways The State Railways of the Republic of Turkey ( tr, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti Devlet Demiryolları), abbreviated as TCDD, is a government-owned national railway company responsible with the ownership and maintenance of railway infrastructure in Turkey ...

Ankara Ankara ( , ; ), historically known as Ancyra and Angora, is the capital of Turkey. Located in the central part of Anatolia, the city has a population of 5.1 million in its urban center and over 5.7 million in Ankara Province, mak ...

Turkey Turkey ( tr, Türkiye ), officially the Republic of Türkiye ( tr, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti, links=no ), is a list of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country located mainly on the Anatolia, Anatolian Peninsula in Western Asia, with ...

. It is located in

Ulus Ulus may refer to: Places * Ulus, Bartın, a district in Bartin Province, Turkey * Ulus, Ankara, an important quarter in central Ankara, Turkey ** Ulus (Ankara Metro), an underground station of the Ankara Metro Other uses * ''Ulus'' (newspaper), ...

in central Ankara adjacent to

Ankara station Ankara railway station ( tr, Ankara Garı) is the main railway station in Ankara, Turkey, and is a major transportation hub within the city. The station is the eastern terminus of the Istanbul-Ankara railway corridor, as well as the easternmost s ...

on Hipodrom Avenue.

Architecture

The building was one of the first examples of the Second national architectural movement, also known as ''Turkish New Regionalism''. Containing elements of

Fascist architecture Fascist architecture encompasses various stylistic trends in architecture developed by architects of fascist states, primarily in the early 20th century. Fascist architectural styles gained popularity in the late 1920s with the rise of modernism a ...

and

Stripped Classicism Stripped Classicism (or "Starved Classicism" or "Grecian Moderne") Jstor is primarily a 20th-century classicist architectural style stripped of most or all ornamentation, frequently employed by governments while designing official buildings. I ...

along with Turkish Neoclassicalism, it was constructed with reinforced concrete and the outer facade from stone. The marble for the colonnade at the north entrance was brought from

Bilecik Bilecik is the provincial capital of Turkey's Bilecik Province which is located in northwestern Anatolia. As of 2015 urban population of the city is 64,531. The mayor is Semih Şahin ( CHP). The town is famous for its numerous restored Turki ...

and

Hereke Hereke is a town in Kocaeli province, Turkey, located to the north of the Gulf of İzmit, near Istanbul. It is famous for Hereke carpets. It was bound to Gebze district until transferring to Körfez in 1987 and had municipality status until 2009. ...

as the color matches the stone. Wide steps to the main entrance promote a grandiose feeling, as is typical with fascist architecture.

History

Construction of the building began in 1939 on lands adjacent to the

building, which was just completed two years earlier in 1937. The direct predecessor to the Turkish State Railways, the

State Railways and Seaports Administration The State Railways and Seaports Administration ( tr, Devlet Demiryolları ve Limanları İdare-i Umumiyesi) or DDYL was a state-owned railway company formed in 1927 by the merger of three state-owned railways: the Anatolian Baghdad Railways, Eas ...

( tr, Devlet Demiryolları ve Limanları Umum Müdürlüğü or DDYLUM), commissioned the project and selected Bedri Uçar to be the architect. Uçar designed the building in the Turkish New Regionalism style, which was influenced by the

Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical ...

and

Nazi Germany Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...

. The building was to have two main entrances on the north and south sides, one on the street side and one on the track side; a central structure, in the shape of rectangle with a large courtyard, would have four

wings A wing is a type of fin that produces lift while moving through air or some other fluid. Accordingly, wings have streamlined cross-sections that are subject to aerodynamic forces and act as airfoils. A wing's aerodynamic efficiency is exp ...

, two on the east and two on the west sides. However, due to the request of a conference hall to be included and the inability to expand into the surrounding areas, the building's size was scaled down. The central structure along with the wings, originally planned with 3 floors and 2 floors respectively, were changed to include 4 floors on all three sections. The central structure of the building was completed in 1941. The wings were added on later because DDYLUM contracted the central structure and wings as two separate projects. The first two wings were completed in 1958 on the street (north) side. The third wing (southeast) was completed in 1974 and the fourth (southwest) in 1979. Finally, the conference hall in the courtyard was completed in 1986.

References

{{reflist Buildings and structures completed in 1941 Buildings and structures in Ankara Second Turkish national architecture Turkish State Railways

Architecture

History

See also

References