In 1900 the American journal The Missionary Herald wrote that the monastery's orphanage had 25 to 30 boys, while the monastery school was "by far the largest and most advanced school in the province outside the city [of Van], this village unlike most others, having had some sort of a school for several years." In the early 20th century the monastery was surrounded by residential houses and various buildings for economic purposes. A 1911 photo by the ethnographer Yervand Lalayan shows "peasants with oxen plowing a field directly beneath its walls." The American missionary Herbert M. Allen (1865–1911) wrote in 1903 that Architecture The monastic complex contained two churches: St. Sandukht and Surb Astvatsatsin ("Holy Mother of God"). The mausoleum of Gregory of Narek was located to the east of the St. Sandukht church. The church of Surb Astvatsatsin had a "domed hall" design, and was located south of St. Sandukht. In 1787 vardapet Barsegh built a rectangular, four-columned gavit (narthex), on the tombs of Hovhannes vardapet (the brother of Gregory) and the philosopher Ananias of Narek. In front of the gavit's western entrance a three-storey bell-tower was built in 1812. Destruction and current state The monastery ceased to function during the Armenian genocide of 1915 which resulted in the Armenian population of the region being exterminated. According to Sevan Nişanyan it was demolished around 1951, at the same period that an official order for the demolition of the Holy Cross Cathedral of Aghtamar was issued. The village of Narek is now largely Kurdish-populated and is known as Yemişlik in Turkish and Nerik in Kurdish. The scholar James R. Russell, who visited the monastery site in 1994 and 1997, was told by local Kurdish villagers that a 10th-century khachkar (cross stone) was destroyed by the Turkish police. The monastery is completely destroyed. In the early 2000s "there were still some remnants of an archway of the monastery." A mosque now stands where the monastery once stood. In December 2008 the Turkish-Armenian architect Zakarya Mildanoğlu announced that the Turkish government had decided to rebuild Narekavank, among some other half-ruined or destroyed churches and monasteries in eastern Turkey. In September 2010, Mildanoğlu compiled a list of around 90 Armenian churches and monasteries in the Lake Van region including Narekavank. He recommended that the Turkish government take the necessary measures to preserve them. See also Other prominent churches in the Lake Van region: