The story of the building and the Houvardas family, from 1870 to today.
Georgios Houvardas built the family tannery in Karlovasi, Samos. It is a two-storey stone industrial building, 550 square metres per floor — 50 metres long by 11 metres wide — oriented almost exactly east to west, with a deviation of just 1 degree. He left it to his children, who in turn left it to theirs.
One of the heirs was the first Georgios's grandson — also named Georgios Houvardas. After the war, he gathered all the co-heirs, bought out their shares, and became the sole owner of the tannery. He was a very successful tanner and kept working until 1985.
In 1985 the tannery passed into the hands of his son, Yannis Houvardas. Yannis carried on the family tradition until 1997, when every tannery on Samos closed — seven of them in total, operating since 1967 — due to market conditions. It was the end of an era for the island.
After it closed, the building was rented to a woodworker, who used it until 2020. That year, the devastating Samos earthquake destroyed most of the island's tanneries, and caused serious damage to the Houvardas building as well.
Yannis's son, Georgios Houvardas, a mechanical engineer, managed — with great sacrifice and a lot of work — to restore the building to its original form. Today it is rented out as an event space: weddings, art exhibitions, and recently even a conference of Greek university rectors.
Yannis, one of the last people on Samos who actually worked in a tannery, puts it simply: "This building carries that history — and I'd be glad to tell it in person, to anyone who visits."