Articles On Information: Old Haunt of U.S. Spies Becomes a Playground for Istanbul’s Elite

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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://articlesoninformation.blogspot.com/" target="_blank"><img alt="" class="media-viewer-candidate" data-mediaviewer-caption="The mansion that once served as the United States Consulate in Istanbul has been reborn as an outpost of Soho House, a network of clubs across Europe and North America." data-mediaviewer-credit="Tara Todras-Whitehill for The New York Times" data-mediaviewer-src="http://static01.nyt.com/images/2015/04/06/world/ISTANBUL1/ISTANBUL1-superJumbo.jpg" height="271" itemid="http://static01.nyt.com/images/2015/04/06/world/ISTANBUL1/ISTANBUL1-master675.jpg" itemprop="url" src="http://static01.nyt.com/images/2015/04/06/world/ISTANBUL1/ISTANBUL1-master675.jpg" width="400" /><span class="caption-text"></span></a></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://articlesoninformation.blogspot.com/" target="_blank"><span class="caption-text">The mansion that once served 
as the United States Consulate in Istanbul has been reborn as an outpost
 of Soho House, a network of clubs across Europe and North America.</span>
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            <span class="visually-hidden">Credit</span>
            Tara Todras-Whitehill for The New York Times</span></a></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">ISTANBUL
 — For more than a century, the grand Italianate mansion that serves as 
an anchor of this city’s European quarter was a beehive of American 
diplomacy and espionage. Spies toiled within and met their agents at the
 bar across the street, reporters dropped by for after-work drinks, and 
any Turk could walk in off the street to see the latest art exhibition 
or browse the library. There seemed to be a celebration every night.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">“We
 were partying all the time,” said Ayse Ozakinci, who was a librarian 
for four decades in the imposing structure, the American Consulate in 
Istanbul. “There was a festive mood for everyone.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">And
 then, a dozen years ago, the party stopped and security walls enclosed 
the mansion, as the threat of terrorism sent American diplomats to a 
fortified hillside compound on the city’s outskirts, overlooking the 
Bosporus.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">That
 put the American government in the real estate business, thanks to a 
law that required the State Department to keep ownership of the historic
 building as a space to foster relations between the United States and 
the Middle East.</span></span><br />
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<a href="http://articlesoninformation.blogspot.com/" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><img alt="" class="media-viewer-candidate" data-mediaviewer-caption="Ayse Ozakinci, who was a librarian at the consulate for four decades, said the renovations had restored much of the original grandeur." data-mediaviewer-credit="Tara Todras-Whitehill for The New York Times" data-mediaviewer-src="http://static01.nyt.com/images/2015/04/06/world/ISTANBUL2/ISTANBUL2-superJumbo.jpg" height="273" itemid="http://static01.nyt.com/images/2015/04/06/world/ISTANBUL2/ISTANBUL2-articleLarge.jpg" itemprop="url" src="http://static01.nyt.com/images/2015/04/06/world/ISTANBUL2/ISTANBUL2-articleLarge.jpg" width="400" /></span></span></a></div>
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                <a href="http://articlesoninformation.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Ayse Ozakinci, who was a librarian at the consulate for four decades, said the renovations had restored much of the original grandeur.                                    Credit            Tara Todras-Whitehill for The New York Times        </a>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">Now the party is back on, but not exactly in the way lawmakers had intended.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">The
 walls came down recently, offering breathing room to a crammed 
neighborhood and unveiling the building’s rebirth as an opulent 
clubhouse for Istanbul’s social elite. With a new luxury hotel beside 
it, the mansion, under a 51-year, roughly $25 million lease with the 
United States government, is the latest outpost of the private club 
empire Soho House.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">In
 2004, Congress, through the efforts of the former Senator Ernest F. 
Hollings and backed by onetime Istanbul diplomats who wanted the United 
States to preserve the building’s history, created the<a href="http://www.hollingscenter.org/" title="Center’s website"> Hollings Center for International Dialogue</a>.
 The idea was to use the mansion as a place to “reinforce communication 
and understanding between the U.S. and the Muslim world,” according to 
the center’s website.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">But
 the cost of renovations and upkeep eventually made it necessary to find
 a commercial use for the structure, known as the Palazzo Corpi for the 
rich shipbuilder who had it constructed in the 19th century as his home.
 Soho House, with its Turkish partner Bilgili Holding, has invested 
nearly $110 million in the project and is now the primary tenant, while 
the Hollings Center will have an office in the building and run its 
programs and workshops from there.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">Walking
 through the building recently for the first time in years, Ms. 
Ozakinci, who is not a member of the new club, marveled at the 
renovations, saying they had restored much of the original grandeur, 
even as she lamented that the mansion was not open to the public.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">She
 described how the modest wife of one former ambassador had ordered that
 ceiling murals depicting nude goddesses be painted over. The murals 
have now been rescued from layers of oil and paint.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">She said there had been a “secret floor” up top for the <a class="meta-org" href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/c/central_intelligence_agency/index.html?inline=nyt-org" title="More articles about the Central Intelligence Agency.">Central Intelligence Agency</a>.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">“We pretended not to know about that,” she said.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">A
 rooftop pool, flanked by yellow-and-white striped beds and with a 
sweeping view of the Golden Horn waterway and the minarets of the old 
city, is a fresh touch. Inside, a layered approach to interior design 
creates a “Downton Abbey”-meets-“Mad Men” effect, mixing late 
19th-century with midcentury modern furniture. There are vintage club 
chairs and old chesterfield sofas, and many new pieces manufactured in <a class="meta-loc" href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/turkey/index.html?inline=nyt-geo" title="More news and information about Turkey.">Turkey</a> and made to look antique by workers banging away with hammers and chains.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">Nick
 Jones, the founder and chief executive of Soho House, a growing network
 of private clubs across Europe and North America, decided on an 
Istanbul location after visiting the city several years ago. “I just 
fell in love with it,” he said. “Wow. I was taken with the place. It 
sort of reminded me of New York energy.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">Mr.
 Jones committed to Istanbul before violent antigovernment protests 
swept Turkey in 2013, and before the economy slowed, diminishing an 
image of the country as a rising global power that took hold in the 
earlier years of the Islamist government of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who 
was prime minister for more than a decade and is now president.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">Mr.
 Jones said he watched the unfolding political turmoil closely but was 
not scared away. “In my experience, 20 to 25 years now, whatever 
happens, people still want to eat and drink and have a bit of fun,” he 
said.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">A
 committee decides whom to admit and whom to reject, and careful 
attention is paid to artists, writers and filmmakers, or as Mr. Jones 
put it, the “creative soul” of Istanbul. “The struggling scriptwriter is
 still one of our favorite members,” he said.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">But having money is important, too, and plenty of bankers and lawyers make their way through the door.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">Amid
 the opulence, the drinking and the networking among the elite, there is
 also an inescapable sense of separateness: Those who gather here, 
despite their pretensions, represent a stratum of society far from the 
center of things in Turkey these days. Mr. Erdogan’s government has 
pushed for more religion in public life, cracked down on alcohol and 
made Islamic schooling more widely available.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">The
 mansion sits as a testament to a bygone — some would say more innocent —
 era of American diplomacy, when Foreign Service officers and spies, in 
Istanbul but also around the world, could interact freely and casually 
with locals, without the barriers of high walls and intricate security 
procedures.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">“Here
 in the middle of the city, everyone came in,” said Ms. Ozakinci, who 
added that “relations flourished” between Americans and Turks. When the 
consulate moved to the fortified compound in 2003, she said, “suddenly 
we were far from everything and no one wanted to come.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">Graham
 Fuller, who as a young C.I.A. officer was stationed in Istanbul in the 
1960s, recalled the time in an email as “truly a bygone era when 
American diplomats were still welcomed and part of the inner city life 
with only a lazy guard or two keeping watch over the consulate. The 
magic of the neighborhood still lingers in those back streets, but the 
American presence no longer does.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">Things
 began to change after the Persian Gulf war, Ms. Ozakinci said. Sandbags
 were piled near the windows, and eventually the street in front was 
closed to traffic and visitors had to be cleared days in advance.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">The
 building was bought by the United States in 1907 — the first real 
estate it owned in Europe and the second worldwide, after a facility in 
Tangier, Morocco, a gift from the ruler of the country. The mansion was 
the American Embassy in the late years of the Ottoman Empire and became 
the consulate after Ankara was named the capital of the Turkish 
republic.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">If
 the walls could speak, they might tell of the ghost of a Genoese 
shipping magnate’s mistress, once said to haunt the halls and ornate 
rooms, or of the time the building changed hands in a poker game.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">The
 latter tale goes like this: The rich American ambassador posted in the 
early 1900s to what was then called Constantinople bought the building 
with money out of his own pocket, for 28,000 Ottoman liras, or the 
equivalent of $123,200 at the time, on the assumption that he would be 
reimbursed by Congress. Washington lawmakers refused. Then, as recounted
 in a memoir by an American teacher who lived here then and as passed 
down through generations of diplomats, the ambassador organized a party 
for senators and congressmen.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">“There
 were rich meats, there were unlimited quantities of first class drinks,
 and finally there was poker which lasted deep in to the night,” the 
teacher wrote.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">At
 some point, having lost “conspicuous sums,” the ambassador proposed the
 embassy as a bet. If he lost, he would pay for it. But he won, and 
Congress, it is said, appropriated the funds and acquired the mansion.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">The story may be apocryphal, but it has persisted, lending the mansion’s majestic history an extra glint of intrigue.</span></span></div>
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