De Jongh house (20 Menderes cad.)

For many years the house served as a sanatorium then as a nurse’s college. Since 1999 it has been vacant and suffering rain damage. The old photos below shows the state of the house sometime before 1922. According to the De Jongh family papers, the family moved in to the property in 1909.
The house itself is in the middle, with a canopy on the second floor veranda obscuring the original structure. The canopy was added when the house was used as a TB sanatorium, to provide shade for patients sitting outside. The structure to the left of the house is a late annex, added by either the German consulate or the Spercos after Charles Sperco bought the house in 1939; it was apparently designed to harmonize with the house. The structure to the right of the house was built to house patients after the property was turned into a sanatorium by the Turkish state. Willem Daniels believes the house was leased to the German government to serve as their consulate in 1927. The lower photo shows the interior hall way.

Nuray Mutlu, as head of the nurse training school, for the past 3 years (until 2001) has had the unenviable task as acting caretaker of the former De Jongh house, was prior to that the head nurse teacher, when the building was the teaching institution. She clearly is frustrated with the wastage of space and her talents, and already the building shows signs of decay through water seepage and non-use. The building at present (2010) still stands vacant.

The shot above appears to show grandmother seated in the middle, thus according to Edward de Jongh couldn’t have been taken during the WWI years as she was in England, and only his parents lived at the house then. The picture below is likely to be taken after the war as the stuffed bear at the bottom of the stairs has been removed, an object that was beginning to create a moral objection in the post-war and growing children climate.

Below a photo of the De Jongh house after it was sold by the original owners (1928) taken in June 1931, showing forum member Stephanie Rothenburg-Unz’s step sister Erica. Their father left Smyrna around 1937-38, to Istanbul and possibly the house then passed in ownership to the German consul Holstein (details are sketchy and how the Spercos, the first owners after the De Jongs, fit in isn’t clear).