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Lebanon loses defender of heritage architecture Lady Cochrane
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This combination of pictures created on August 10, 2020 shows (L) a view of the Sursock Museum, once a private home built in 1912 and became a host to an impressive permanent art collection as photographed in the neighborhood of Ashrafiyeh in Lebanon's capital Beirut on June 27, 2008; and (R) a handout image obtained from the museum and taken on August 5, 2020, showing its damaged facade with empty windows after their stained glass was broken in the aftermath of the massive blast at the port of Beirut which ravaged entire neighborhoods of the city. (AFP/Sursock Museum/Joseph Barrak)
A
veteran advocate of the arts and Lebanon's cultural heritage, Yvonne Sursock Cochrane died Monday aged 98, four weeks after the devastating Beirut blast in which she was injured.
Born into a wealthy Greek Orthodox family -- famed for their Sursock Museum -- and married to an Irish nobleman, Lady Cochrane died on the eve of the centenary of Lebanon, friends and family said on Facebook.
As head of the Association for the Protection of the Sites and Ancient Homes of Lebanon (APSAD), she devoted her life to the preservation of her country's rich architectural heritage.
She had labelled the capital's chaotic and profit-driven reconstruction after its devastating 1975-1990 civil war as little more than an "archaeological massacre".
"Beirut, once a joy of the Mediterranean, has been turned into a junkyard," she said of the decade that followed the war.
But she voiced confidence that Beirut would once again become "the garden of the Middle East".
The massive blast at Beirut port on August 4 hurled her several meters from the terrace where was taking afternoon tea with friends, leaving her with cuts and bruises.
Read also: UNESCO in massive fundraising drive for blast-hit Beirut
The explosion ripped through swathes of the city, killing at least 188 people and injuring more than 6,500 others.
Her listed Ottoman mansion with gardens looking down onto the sea was left in near ruins, like many architectural marvels, including the Sursock Museum, converted from a house donated by Lady Cochrane's uncle.
"We shall rebuild," she vowed afterwards.
The death of a woman esteemed as "the memory of Lebanon" stirred outpourings of grief and nostalgia on social media.
"A grand figure of the Lebanon of old is gone. A page has turned on a certain refined, cultivated and cosmopolitan Lebanon," Marlene Kanaan wrote on Facebook.
