Name of Monument:

Orosdi-Back

Other name of the Monument:

Omar Effendi

Location:

Downtown Cairo, Egypt

Date of Monument:

1906 (the building)

Architect(s) / Master-builder(s):

Raoul Brandon

History:

The Orosdi-Back story starts in Hungary with the liaison of two families when Adolf Orosdi’s sister, Antoinette (?-1879), married Maurice Back. Given that they were Jewish and had supported the Hungarian rebellion against the Austrian Empire, Adolf Orosdi and Maurice Back settled in Galata district in Istanbul, a focal point for Jews and one of the Ottoman Empire’s most vibrant business centres. In 1855, they established their shop under the name of Omar Effendi. The Orosdi-Back enterprise expanded from there, and their branches were given the combined name “Orosdi-Back”. It had outlets in Constantinople, Adana, Izmir, Samsun, Cairo, Alexandria, Port-Said, Zagazig, Tanta, Tunis, Philippopoli (Plovdiv), Bucharest, Aleppo, Beirut, Salonica, Tabriz, Tehran, Casablanca, Meknes, Vienna from 1893 and Basra and Baghdad after WWI.

Description:

Modern Egypt and cosmopolitan Cairo emerged in the context of diverse foreign communities and their interaction with Egyptians. By the turn of the 20th century, this cultural exchange gave birth to a new kind of commercial activity: big department stores (grands magasins), a novelty that developed more or less at the same time as it did in Europe. Foremost amongst these was Orosdi-Back, one of the largest department stores in Egypt, whose rivals included Cicurel, Chémla, Sednaoui and others. Raoul Brandon, a French Jewish architect, designed the Orosdi-Back premises in the corner of two important streets, `Abd al-Aziz and Rushdi Pasha, in 1906. He designed a building with glamour à la parisiènne, evoking the elegant department stores of Paris, in Neo-Baroque style with a glimpse of Art Nouveau flair in its lines.

Selected bibliography:

Kupferschmidt, Uri, The Orosdi-Back Saga: European Department Stores and Middle Eastern Consumers, Istanbul: OBARC, 2007.

Citation of this web page:

Ahmad al-Bindari "Orosdi-Back" in "Sharing History", Museum With No Frontiers, 2024. https://sharinghistory.museumwnf.org/database_item.php?id=monuments;AWE;eg;8;en

Prepared by: Ahmad Al-BindariAhmad al-Bindari

19th and 20th Century Researcher and Photographer, Architecture and Urban Heritage Program - 19th and 20th Centre for Documentation of Cultural and Natural Heritage (CULTNAT), Bibliotheca Alexandrina.
Copyedited by: Daniel de la VegaDaniel de la Vega

Daniel de la Vega is a copy editor based in Portland, Oregon. He obtained his bachelor’s degree in linguistics from the University of California at Santa Cruz in 2014 and has since done editing and localization work on everything from college applications to magazines to video game dialogue.

MWNF Working Number: ET2 008