ABSTRACT
The apartments that lined the Republic Boulevard as the building blocks of a new economy were going up at the same time as the Istanbul Hilton across the street. This chapter examines the construction of the Hilton International Hotel with a focus on an extensive report that the hotel’s architects, Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, prepared for Turkey in 1951 on housing and construction. It also examines the subsequent visit of Charles Abrams, a New York labor lawyer and housing expert who came to Turkey on a United Nations (UN) mission to advise on housing finance and regulatory systems related to the utilization of urban land. Abrams would find that, not unlike what he had experienced at home, local politics would also be the primary barrier against regulatory practices. Debunking all essentializing differences between the East and the West, this postwar context would require Abrams to reposition the UN’s role in development.
