Support Iraqi Ruins
Images 1 (3/2006)
Images 2 (4/2006)
Images 3 (12/2007)
Article 1
(Heritage House #9)
Article 2
(The Middle Gate)
Article 3
(The City of Ashur)
Status
of Restoration: Heritage House Nine
Baghdad, Iraq
August 2006
The State Board of Antiquities and Heritage decided to undertake a restoration of the Heritage House Number Nine approximately two years past. The house is in Baghdad, located on Rasheed Street along the Tigris River. Tawfiq Al Khudairy built the house, around 1885.
To undertake this operation, the State Board established a committee consisting of four members, including myself. Our mission was to restore the house to its original grandeur.
To commence operations, we surveyed the location to insure the correct boundaries, and discovered it possessed a small garden, and two small fields, one directly after the entrance and the other one in the rear.
The house consisted of ten rooms distributed between the ground floor and upper floor. The house contained eighteen wood columns to lift the two floors, and all columns possess a crown at their most height.
After studying the house from different views, the committee found that all roofs? [Foundation?]These had been built by clay and wood, were damaged and had fallen by natural circumstances due to the winds of time, which also caused the walls to be partially damaged. In addition to this damage, the committee discovered that recently many walls had been built by bricks and gypsum, and covered by concrete, which also included the main old walls.
The mission of our committee was not easy, and Immediately we discovered one of many problems, we could not maintain the roof by the same material (clay and wood), because first, these will not last for any duration of time, and second, it is impossible to find builders with the same knowledge and experience as before.
To commence with the roof, we decided to use bricks and gypsum with girder. Our first step was to remove all the fallen ceiling, and additional walls, and cleaned the house of all debris, then we started our restoration by removing the concrete from the walls and strength them by using the shape girder inside the walls with concrete and covered them with bricks and gypsum. We built the roofs with bricks and gypsum and girders.
The second step after finishing the roofs was the columns and their crowns, which were damaged by wood insects and natural conditions, so we removed existing columns and replaced with iron and covered them with wood.
The front of the house possessed three balconies which were made of wood and colored glasses, but unfortunately all had been damaged by wood insects and natural conditions, and therefore we used the same kinds of wood and other materials as previously used on the columns to strength them all.
Although we are constantly working on the final steps of preservation, there are still much to do, in order to give the house the same appearance as when it was built in 1885, by Tawfiq Al-Khudairy.
