Today, in the Tineretului–Văcărești neighborhood, only a few street names remind us of its old inhabitants: Calea Văcărești, Manu Cavafu, Cărămidari, Lânăriei, and Tăbăcari. The rest of the area — now bounded by Tineretului Boulevard, Gheorghe Șincai Boulevard, Splaiul Unirii, and Unirii Boulevard — has been transformed, its landscape dominated by sunlit apartment blocks. Yet these few street names still tell a story — the story of a community of craftsmen, gardeners, florists, and ordinary people whose world was erased by modernization, often violently.

The streets that still carry the memory of the past

Calea Văcărești, for instance, is said by the elderly not to have been named after the noble Văcărești family, but after the cows (vaci) that used to graze in the Dâmbovița meadow, a hint of a rural world slowly turning urban. 

The name Manu Cavafu recalls a staroste de kavafi, a guild master of tanners, a sign that leather-working was once common here. Other street names, Cărămidari (“brick-makers”), Lânăriei (“wool workers”), and Tăbăcari (“tanners”) — point to the traditional crafts that once shaped both the livelihoods and the character of the place.

Old maps reveal a completely different world: houses with gardens and orchards, small streams running across fertile ground, and people who made a living from the soil.

The world of flowers and gardening along Calea Văcărești

The land between Calea Văcărești and what is now the Văcărești wetland once formed one of Bucharest’s most famous floricultural and horticultural basins. Entire families grew flowers and vegetables — peonies, gladioli, and other species — competing to produce the most beautiful blooms, since the city’s floral markets depended almost entirely on their work.

The streets called Povestei (“Story Street”) and Firul Văii (“Valley Thread Street”) connected Calea Văcărești to the old Vitan Market, winding through orchards and greenhouses. Here, the groundwater was very close to the surface; tiny streams carved the soil and kept it moist, perfect for delicate crops. 

In spring, when the peonies bloomed, Queen Marie herself is said to have visited these gardens — today’s Văcărești Lake area — to pick flowers. In autumn she would return for gladioli. Witnesses described it as a “fairyland of colors.”

It was not only an agricultural zone but a living community. Each plot was carefully tended; every yard had a well for watering seedlings. The land was generous and never suffered from drought. 

The florists and gardeners built their livelihoods here; for many Bucharest residents, flowers for homes or gifts could be found only in this area. It was the city’s “garden basin,” a place where nature and human labor thrived together.

The slum world — reeds, shacks, the Valea Plângerii and harsh living

Yet it was not a paradise alone. Among the orchards and flowerbeds were reed thickets, swamps, shanties, and poverty. An infamous area called the Valea Plângerii (“Valley of Tears”) was known for its precarious housing, flooding, and unsanitary conditions. People said that wolves howled there at night — hence the name of a local tavern, “Urlătoarea” (“The Howler”).

Life was fragile and uncertain, but the people of the district were united by faith and solidarity. A newspaper report from December 1930 describes a great feast at Cărămidarii de Jos Church, where parishioners received 1,500 loaves of bread, the meat of an ox, a calf, and 300 kilograms of fish, all donated by the Butchers’ Association from the Abattoir. These butchers, like the gardeners and florists, were spiritually tied to the church and to the community.

At the end of Calea Văcărești, on Piscului Street, the Cărămidarii de Jos Church still stands. In the 1930s it was rebuilt with the support of the Royal House, and King Carol II and Queen Marie personally attended its rededication, contributing funds to ensure the church would endure — just as it does today.

Such gestures reflect the moral value and identity of this world: a modest but dignified community bound by faith, labor, and mutual care.

The Arghezi family, Cociocul valley, and the gardens of daily life

Behind Tudor Arghezi’s house stretched a valley called Cociocul, extending to the area where today stands the Palace of the Children. Around 50–60 families owned the fertile lands of the valley. Each yard had a well used to water seedlings, and the land rewarded constant care with rich harvests.

On the left rose Mărțișor Hill, where Arghezi’s home still stands. Behind it began the valley, flowing down toward Calea Văcărești. Under the hill, roughly where Lumea Copiilor Park is today, lay vegetable gardens. 

Beyond them, toward Piscului Square (now the site of the Sala Polivalentă sports arena), there was nothing but swamps — a wild, water-filled landscape. The numerous water pits there had formed after the April 1944 bombings, when an anti-aircraft battery stationed beneath Mărțișor Hill was hit, leaving craters that filled with water.

After the communist regime came to power, the top of the hill — now the site of Orășelul Copiilor amusement park — became a popular gathering spot. The “Constructorul” sports complex was located there, with rugby and football fields where people from all over Bucharest would spend weekends: football, barbecue, beer, and conversation.

On Calea Văcărești stood the “Azuga” tavern, marking the beginning of a more developed area with two-story houses and Jewish-owned shops. Walking toward Șincai High School, on the right side where apartment blocks now rise, lay the Lânăriei Housing Estate, with streets named Lânăriei and Cărămidari. 

Here began Piscului Market and the Mulberry Orchard, a cluster of homes with gardens and fruit trees. It was a small world of courtyards, paths, and cultivated soil — the living fabric of prewar Bucharest.

Violent modernization: demolitions, parks, and apartment blocks

The transformation of the current neighborhood took place in stages over 18–20 years. It began in the 1960s, when the communist authorities launched large-scale urban renewal and drainage works. 

Swamps were dredged, silt was removed, the current Tineretului Lake was formed, and Tineretului Park was landscaped. Schoolchildren were sent to plant trees — part of a civic campaign to “green the capital.”

By the 1970s, the Sala Polivalentă was completed, while the old sports fields for rugby and football disappeared, replaced by the Orășelul Copiilor recreation area.

But this modernization came at a cost: the destruction of a way of life. Between 1960 and 1986, Calea Văcărești was systematically demolished, along with the small houses and gardens that had defined it for generations. 

The patriarchal, community-based rhythm of life — with its flower growers, small merchants, and craftsmen — was erased. In its place rose standardized concrete apartment blocks, indifferent to history or identity.

Today, little remains of that world: only a few street names and the fading memories of the elderly. The renovated façades of apartment buildings shine in the sun, yet they hide a past of gardens, wells, and hand-built homes.

Meaning, nostalgia, and the return to roots

The Tineretului–Văcărești neighborhood is now a modern area of Bucharest — with parks, broad boulevards, and urban amenities. But beneath its present form lies a deep history: a story of ordinary people who lived in harmony with the earth, whose work tied flowers to faith and community to nature.

The significance of those gardens, greenhouses, and small trades is not only nostalgic. It reminds us that cities cannot grow endlessly on top of destruction without losing something essential — the sense of place. The crafts of the old mahalale — leather workers, brick-makers, weavers — were not merely occupations; they were a moral code, a social identity, and a connection to the land.

Remembering this past can inspire the future. The idea of reconnecting urban life with nature — through community gardens, floral spaces, and local species — is, in a way, a return to the old Văcărești spirit.

The street names — Manu Cavafu, Cărămidari, Lânăriei, Tăbăcari — are silent witnesses. They offer a bridge back to the orchards that once bloomed there, to the flowers Queen Marie once gathered, to the small courtyards and the hardworking people who made a living from them.

This story is not merely nostalgic; it is a call to listen to the city, to recognize its memory, and to weave history into modern development. Every time we demolish without thought, we should ask: What disappears along with this house? What life vanishes with it?

When you walk today along Calea Văcărești, Lânăriei, or Manu Cavafu, you walk above layers of history — over fertile soil, over the gardens that once perfumed the air of Bucharest, over the lives of those who believed in honest work and in their bond with nature. Behind today’s apartment blocks lies a lost world — perhaps not irretrievably lost, if we choose to remember and revive its spirit.

We also recommend: Tineretului Park, between legend and reality: the Cocioc swamp, the Valley of Weeping, and the garden that rose from a garbage dump