text: On 20 May 1938, president of the Yugoslav government Milan Stojadinović, pulled a lever on a Danish excavator, ceremonially starting the works to drain the land at the confluence. The large "Sydhavnen" excavator was transported by ship via the English Channel, the Dardanelles, the Bosphorus, the Black Sea and finally the Danube. It was reported at the time that this was the first time that an ocean ship had anchored in the port of Belgrade. The draining proved to be much more expensive than expected. The "Sydhavnen" excavator sank to the bottom of the Sava river after World War II broke out in 1941, but was lifted out after the war and repaired. It continued to work under the name "Kolubara".
  In 1930s members of Belgrade's affluent elite began to buy land from the villagers of Bežanija, which at that time administratively spread all the way to the King Alexander Bridge, which was a dividing point between Bežanija and Zemun. An "Association for the embellishing of the left bank of Sava - New Belgrade" was founded in 1932. From 1933 a settlement, consisting mostly of individual villas, began to develop. Also, a group of White Russian emigrants built several small buildings, mostly rented by the carters who carried goods across the river. As the settlement, which became known as New Belgrade, was built without building permits, authorities threatened to demolish it, but in 1940 government officially "legalized the informal settlement of New Belgrade". Prior to that, the city already semi-officially recognized the new settlement, as it helped with building its streets and pathways. By 1939 it already had several thousand inhabitants, a representative in the city hall, and was unofficially called New Belgrade.