Ghost of Commerce Past: Abandoned Storefront, Tahtakale Quarter, Eminönü, Istanbul
Former storefront, ground-floor of an abandoned late19th-century Greek-style apartment house, Tahtakale quarter, Eminönü, Istanbul, 2012. (Fuji X100). Click to enlarge.
A boarded-up storefront in a boarded-up building, a ghostly survivor in a once-thriving neighborhood. The brick façade of the ground floor and wood-plank-covered exterior of the upper floors suggest that the building may have been built and owned by Istanbul Greeks a century to a century-and-a-half ago.
Bubkes.Org 
fantastic. i’ve seen other old wooden buildings like that in istanbul, which i was told used to belong to greeks. they’re beautiful; i hope they survive.
Many thanks for your comment. In Istanbul, there are remaining wooden houses and wood-covered-facade apartment buildings that had been built by and belonged to Muslims, Greeks, Armenians and Jews. Ethnic of the structure origins can be tracked neighborhood by neighborhood and stylistically as well. Of those that remain, many have had their facades covered by other materials. Of those that have been restored, some have been restored properly and others with faux-wood siding materials. I’ll be showing additional obscure examples in future posts of Bubkes.Org. By the way, http://roundhouses.wordpress.com/ is equally fantastic; I’ve just added it to the “blogroll” of this site. SL
thanks!