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Article 2. It is my unalterable wish that my house (three stories and a high basement) at Gračanička Street, No. 18, should be given for his lifetime’s enjoyment to Mr. Jovan Martinović, formerly a wholesale grain dealer of Topličin Venac, No. 11, with the proviso that after his death the house should revert to the permanent ownership of my universal heir, designated in these documents; but under no circumstances should any member of Mr. Martinović’s family (most particularly his widow) have any right to the house by any word or intention of this testament.
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The next building which lay in my path was the Renaissance palace belonging to the National Bank, which for numerous reasons I should have given a wide berth. Primarily because of its purpose: I had no time to idle away on structures not meant for accommodation. Nevertheless, I stopped in front of it long enough to show respect to the memory of its builder, the deceased architect Constantine Jovanović. Not at all, of course, because of this ponderous uninspired, truly masculine building, but because of our personal relations. When in 1882 the Tajsić fields had been divided up into building lots, Constantine, on the instructions of the colonial importer K.S., drew up plans for a family house at Vračar; a rare feminine house among his forceful and muscular works, which I later bought and christened Irina, having registered her on Saint Irina’s Day. He also began the plans for Athenaida in Senjak, but died before he could finish her.
Since I have mentioned the first of my architects, it would clearly be unjust to remain silent about the others. I was very close to some of them: we planned and built houses which I still own today. Others designed houses which I bought and quickly resold — houses that merely passed through my hands, whose efficient fingers were ever ready to grasp anything successful, unusual, elegant, and comfortable, but let slip anything which fell below my passion for perfection. In almost every case, however, the architects’ commercial interests — so incompatible with my own concerns — became a source of constant misunderstanding between us. For what builder can understand why his house is sold and not someone else’s, or why, instead of his house, a competitor’s is bought? Consequently, I can say that my friendship with my architects usually lasted just as long as my ownership over their respective houses. But eventually, exasperated by their hysterical irritability, I was forced to rely almost entirely on my uncle Constantine (despite his advanced years) and his son, the architectural engineer Jacob Negovan (even though Jacob’s capabilities were limited) to carry out the work. This is not to say that Jacob was a nonentity, for that would be doing him an injustice, which I would like to avoid because of Isidor. But even if he had been as clever as his son, he could scarcely have kept up with all those brilliant architects whom I had had to reject because of their unsufferable temperaments. In any case I was building less by then, as most of Europe was at war; my fear for my noble houses, at the thought of what had happened to Rotterdam and Warsaw, gradually led me to my spiritual and professional paralysis.
I can also recall those younger designers, my contemporaries. Collaboration with them was even more difficult; somehow they began to understand architecture as a free expression of their own inventiveness and not in the natural way, as the most perfect realization of the client’s needs and wishes. With them (to hell with them, for all their talent!) I always risked an unpleasant surprise if I didn’t define every condition by contract and supervise its implementation from the drawing-board on, watch over the papers, and check the construction on the building site; for sometimes they designed what I wanted on paper, but built what they wanted on the building lot.
Since the National Bank has induced me to mention the architects with whom I worked — to the discredit of the Negovan name — I must shed some light on the quarrel between those onetime friends and collaborators, Emilian Josimović of the Lyceum and my grandfather, Simeon Negovan, landowner. If I can’t help those now dead, nothing prevents me from transferring my gratitude to those who can profit from it, and of endorsing the bill of exchange to the heirs and descendants of Isidor’s generation in the following manner:
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Article 3. I will that, after deduction of maintenance costs and taxes, the rent from my houses on Sveti Sava, Poincarret, and Kornelija Stanković Streets be collected in a trust fund, and at the end of each year there shall be designated by the Serbian Royal Academy of Sciences a worthy sum to reward the best work of residential architecture within the town of Belgrade, but only that not exceeding three stories.
There is no objection in this legacy if other donors wish to associate themselves with the fund by their endowments, on the condition that the name “Arsénie Negovan Fund” be retained. As for the prizes, they may be given whatever name is deemed suitable.
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We must approach the feud between Emilian Josimović and my grandfather from a somewhat earlier time.
(It’s to him that I address myself, although it had never occurred to me before to write this in the form of a letter. Originally I hadn’t even intended to set down these notes about my sortie into town. I sat down at my desk to write my will. I was incapable of writing it all in one go. I began to make a draft on the backs of old bills and rent receipts, with the intention of writing it out later, sealing it with wax, and stamping the initials of “A.N.” with my signet ring. I shall use this pause to make a change in the legacy for the foundation of the trust fund: I think that the revenue from a single house will be adequate to show my gratitude — most probably, the house on Sveti Sava Street.)
At that time, then, the Turkish quarter still sprawled around the Kalemegdan fortress, which was bordered by the Moat stretching like a Tartar’s bow from the Varoš-Kapija to the Danube. The Serbs built their homes below the Moat; the majority were houses of timber and unbaked bricks or, less often, plastered and whitewashed huts of woven branches with posts supporting roofs of straw or rushes. Then with youthful vigor they began to push their way uphill from the Sava embankment to the Terazije grazing land where, becoming arrogant, they built houses that rose up another story and were roofed with tiles, and that descended underground into largers, storerooms, and cellars: houses built in stone and walled around, and adorned with balconies and belvederes. Among them were the homes of the Negovans. These Negovans stood out, distinguished by a concept of European orderliness; they built up Gospodska and Pop-Pantina Streets (now Brankova and Marshal Biryuzov Streets), letting nothing fall from their grasp. Yet toward the mosques, fountains, bridges, and tumble-down alleyways and passages of the Turkish quarter, where the buildings of the old Austrian district lay in ruins, they displayed an Oriental impassivity. So it was hardly possible to think of an organized town — a Budapest-like way of life and means of communication — while in the upper and lower towns Asiatic chaos still reigned; each house was put up where and how the owner pleased, obstructing street vistas, cramping façades, and improving heights.