From Factory Floor to Cultural Venue, Istanbul's Industrial Heritage

The Hasanpaşa Gasworks opened in 1892 to supply town gas to the Asian side of the city. In Müze Gazhane's own words it was the second gasworks on the Asian side and the last one built in Istanbul. Gas made from coal lit and heated the area from Kadıköy and Üsküdar up to the edge of Beykoz. Records note that coal was brought in along the Kurbağalıdere stream and taken into the plant on rails, and that during the First World War, when coal ran short, gas was produced from olive pits. After 101 years of operation the plant closed in 1993 and served for a while as a bus garage, scrapyard and coal depot. When the removal of the remaining structures was proposed in 1994, residents and volunteers objected and the site was declared protected.

The restoration was carried out with the architectural historian Afife Batur as consultant; work began in 2014 and the complex opened as Müze Gazhane on 9 July 2021. Run today by İBB Kültür AŞ, it houses the Climate Museum, the Cartoon and Humour Museum, a children's science centre, the Afife Batur Library, an İstanbul Kitapçısı bookshop and two stages of the City Theatres. Start in Gazhane Meydan, the square between the brick buildings, and walk around the facades and tall windows of the old production halls. The Climate Museum, telling the story of climate change inside a plant that once ran on coal, is the most fitting exhibition on this route. The museums close on Mondays, and some sections may shut temporarily for maintenance or new exhibitions, so check the official website.

Source: Müze Gazhane resmi sitesi; Wikipedia.

For a long time Istanbul's gunpowder was made inside the city walls. When the powder works at Şehremini exploded in September 1698, it was decided to build a new one outside the city, in the grounds known as the Garden of İskender Çelebi, today's Ataköy. After two years of construction the Baruthane-i Amire began production in 1701. Throughout the 18th century it was repeatedly repaired after accidents and fires, and after a narrowly avoided fire in October 1791 it was rebuilt entirely in masonry. Its mills were first turned by animals; in the 19th century they were replaced with machinery brought from England, and in 1896 production of smokeless powder began. During the First World War a distillery was added to make the spirit needed to wash smokeless powder.

In the Republican era the works passed to the Military Factories Administration and in 1955 to the Machine and Chemical Industry Corporation, and in the late 1950s its vast grounds were turned over to housing. The main building became Bakırköy Municipality's Yunus Emre Cultural Centre in 1993. The magazines on the shore, the guard tower, the fountain and the Baruthane Tower, built under Selim III as a viewing and resting pavilion, were restored after the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality took ownership in 2018 and reopened on 9 January 2024 as a public space with a library, a museum and a viewing terrace. Look closely at the thick stone walls of the magazines: the strength that storing powder demanded is written into the architecture. Take in the sea from the tower, then see the current exhibition in the museum space of about 250 square metres. Closed on Mondays.

Source: İBB Kütüphane ve Müzeler, Baruthane Müze; Wikipedia.

On the southern shore of the Golden Horn, right in front of the T5 tram's Cibali stop, stands a long masonry building that, according to archival records, was built in 1884 for the Régie administration by the architect Alexandre Vallaury. In return for the empire's foreign debts, tobacco revenues had been handed to the foreign-capital Régie, and the factory operated under it until nationalisation in 1925. It produced not only cigarettes but also cigars, pipe tobacco and snuff. According to research published by Kadir Has University, the factory employed more than two thousand people; women did the packing and men the blending. With its own security unit, infirmary, nursery, fire brigade and canteens, it worked like a small town.

Production continued under the state monopoly Tekel until 1994, when the ageing machinery was retired. The building was leased to the Kadir Has Foundation in 1997, reopened as a university in 2002 after a thorough restoration, and the restoration received a Europa Nostra award in 2003. Make time for the Rezan Has Museum inside: below ground you can walk through a Byzantine cistern dated to the late 11th century, with 48 arches, 15 piers and 20 columns, as well as remains of Ottoman buildings. The factory used the cistern as a tobacco store and, during the Second World War, as a food depot. The museum's exhibition The Space of Labour tells the everyday story of the workers through documents and objects left from the factory. On the way out, step back towards the shore for one more look at the full facade. The museum charges admission and is open every day.

Source: Rezan Has Müzesi; Panorama KHAS; Fatih Belediyesi.

The Feshane story begins with the fez. When the fez became part of both military and civilian dress in the first half of the 19th century, Mahmud II had a factory set up at Kadırga to replace expensive imports from Tunisia, Egypt and Europe; as its need for space and water grew, it moved to the Defterdar shore at Eyüp. Sources place the founding and the move at different dates between the late 1820s and the 1830s. According to the TDV Encyclopedia of Islam, steam engines brought from England and Belgium cut the cost of a fez sharply, woollen cloth looms were added in 1842, and the factory won international recognition at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair. In the great fire of 1866 everything except the steam engine burned, and the factory was rebuilt in 1868.

When wearing the fez was banned in 1925, production turned to cloth; from 1937 it ran under Sümerbank as the Feshane Defterdar Textile Factory. In the mid-1980s, as the Golden Horn shore was redeveloped, the building passed to the municipality; the great weaving hall was kept and the other sections were demolished in 1986. Used for years as a trade fair venue, the hall reopened on 22 June 2023 as Artİstanbul Feshane after restoration by the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality. Inside, take in the scale of the hall first; it shows best what a room full of looms was like. Alongside the exhibitions there is the Naile Akıncı Library. Across the water at Sütlüce stands the Haliç Congress Centre: the slaughterhouse buildings opened there in 1923 were demolished in 1998 to build it, rebuilding rather than conserving. Closed on Mondays.

Source: TDV İslam Ansiklopedisi; İBB Kütüphane ve Müzeler; Wikipedia.

At the far end of the Golden Horn, the Silahtarağa Power Station was the first plant in the Ottoman Empire to supply a city through a central distribution network, and it went into service in 1914. It burned coal shipped from Zonguldak and drew its cooling water from the Golden Horn; it burned more than a thousand tonnes of coal a day and employed over 480 engineers, technicians and doctors. At first it powered palaces, public buildings and tram lines, and its service area gradually spread from Bakırköy to Sarıyer. Until 1952 it was Istanbul's only source of electricity, and according to the Energy Museum even in 1968 it still supplied 92 per cent of the electricity the city consumed. It stopped generating in 1983 and was briefly used as a depot by the electricity authority.

After a conversion project carried out by İstanbul Bilgi University between 2004 and 2007, the site opened as santralistanbul on 8 September 2007. On this short stop your goal is the Energy Museum in the old machine halls. Presented as Turkey's first museum of industrial archaeology, it keeps turbines and generators by makers such as AEG, Siemens and Brown Boveri where they stood. Think of the size of the machines together with the scale of a hall that once carried the light of an entire city. Outside, look at the contemporary buildings raised on the foundations of two demolished boiler houses and faithful to their original dimensions; this way of placing new beside old is very different from the approach at the Gazhane where the day began. The route ends here: the T5's Silahtarağa Mahallesi stop takes you straight back to Eminönü.

Source: Enerji Müzesi (İstanbul Bilgi Üniversitesi); Anadolu Ajansı; Wikipedia.