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Batory Street buildings before 1910, all rights reserved
Źródło: pocztówka ze zbiorów ANK
Fotografia przedstawiająca Art Nouveau townhouses
Jozef Bardach House, Nezalezhnosti (Sapezhynska) Street, photo Paweł Mazur, 2017, all rights reserved
Fotografia przedstawiająca Art Nouveau townhouses
Retail 5 Lesia Kurbas Street (Bielowskiego), photo Paweł Mazur, 2017, all rights reserved
Fotografia przedstawiająca Art Nouveau townhouses
Retail 5 Kurbas Street (Bielowskiego), photo Paweł Mazur, 2017, all rights reserved
Fotografia przedstawiająca Art Nouveau townhouses
Jakub Katz tenement house 30 Nezalezhnosti Street (Sapezhynska Street), photo Paweł Mazur, 2017, all rights reserved
Fotografia przedstawiająca Art Nouveau townhouses
House of Jakub Katz, facade from Sichovy Strilciv Street, photo Paweł Mazur, 2017, all rights reserved
Fotografia przedstawiająca Art Nouveau townhouses
Tenement house at 23 Mazepy Street (Kazimierzowska), photo Paweł Mazur, 2017, all rights reserved
Fotografia przedstawiająca Art Nouveau townhouses
Retail, 23 Mazepy Street (Kazimierzowska), photo Paweł Mazur, 2017, all rights reserved
Fotografia przedstawiająca Art Nouveau townhouses
Tenement house at 7 Mazepy Street (Kazimierzowska), photo Paweł Mazur, 2017, all rights reserved
Fotografia przedstawiająca Art Nouveau townhouses
Detail at 7 Mazepy Street (Kazimierzowska), photo Paweł Mazur, 2017, all rights reserved
Fotografia przedstawiająca Art Nouveau townhouses
Feibisch Israel Katz tenement house, Mazepy (Kazimierzowska) St., photo Paweł Mazur, 2017, all rights reserved
Fotografia przedstawiająca Art Nouveau townhouses
Retail Feibisch Israel Katz, Mazepy (Kazimierzowska) St., photo Paweł Mazur, 2017, all rights reserved
Fotografia przedstawiająca Art Nouveau townhouses
ID: POL-001969-P

Art Nouveau townhouses

The architecture known as Art Nouveau in Stanislavov, as in the whole of Galicia, appears in a historicising form combined only with a greater or lesser amount of Art Nouveau decorative motifs. Nevertheless, the architecture created between 1902 and 1914 constitutes a clearly distinct group of buildings characterised by a particular type of decoration. It is this significant group of buildings in the landscape of Stanislavov, generally referred to as Art Nouveau, that forms the nucleus of the development that largely determines the character and image of the downtown area.

The chronological division of the period of appearance of the Art Nouveau style in Stanislavov architecture would be as follows: initial stage - 1902-1905, diffusion - 1906-1908, while 1909-1913 (or 1914) is the period of more rationalistic solutions and geometric Art Nouveau.

Another, typological division takes into account the existence of different currents within a single style. Art Nouveau in Stanislawow seemed to have two main varieties, developing throughout the period. The first is related to architecture with shapes imported from larger centres: mainly from Lviv, but also partly from Vienna. The second one, even more interesting due to its originality and sometimes even curiosity, is a local variety of Art Nouveau, created on the local ground with Belgian-French influences, owes its origin to one architect - Jan Tomasz Kudelski. Jan Tomasz Kudelski took up the architectural profession at the Lviv Polytechnic, working his first years under Julian Zachariewicz in Lviv, but the greatest flowering of his work came during the Stanislawski period, where he arrived in 1893 and stayed until the First World War.

The main output of Stanislavov's Art Nouveau architecture is represented by residential buildings.

The first dated building, which can be considered a manifestation of early Art Nouveau, was built in 1902, the date of which was set into the floor of the entrance hallway of a building on Hrushevskoho Street (Hrushevskoho 9). It was a rental house built by Jan Koeningsfeld on Szydlovskogo Street; it was designed by Jan T. Kudelski. Here, for the first time, certain features could be seen that would become the quintessence and specificity of Stanislav Art Nouveau in the future, although multi-storey residential tenements were the most conservative type of urban buildings. They were the least subject to structural change, remaining invariably a calculating spatial grid with monotonously placed vertical and horizontal dwellings, but one can already see a completely different approach to the plane of the front wall.

In the Dobrucki House on Goluchovskoho Street (26 Czornowola Street); designed by Jan T. Kudelski in 1902-1904, the linearism of the ribbon decorating the façade, with a circular medallion in the centre, and the horseshoe shape of the windows come to the fore, while maintaining the static, frontality of the still flat façade. The portal on the side led to the entrance hall with a skylight at the top, to the courtyard with cross vaults, and in the middle of the building there is a representative hall and staircase with a square outline.
The building on Romanowskiego Street (3 Harkuszy Street; circa 1903) is another example of early "Stanislav Art Nouveau", in which, however, the basic features of this local style are already present, albeit in a simplified version: the face of the front wall is entirely covered with rustication. The drawing of the rustication, its linearity and fluidity, constitute the decoration of the façade in themselves. The architectural detail, as in every style, was the main expression of the decoration: shallow, semicircular balconies and a bay window, as well as square windows with chamfered upper corners or flattened arches.

Among the dozens of buildings in Stanislavlawa in which we can recognise manifestations of the Art Nouveau style, an important place is occupied by residential buildings on Sapezhynska Street (Nezalezhnosti 16 and 18). The building at No. 16, commissioned by Stanislav Horoszkiewicz, director of the Bourgeois Bank and an industrialist, stands out for its peculiar intimacy and represents solidity and reliability. It was designed by Jan T. Kudelski.

The facades of a number of buildings on Bielowskiego Street had a distinctly Lviv character, treated as a smooth background for the braided Art Nouveau decoration, permeating unhindered from one storey to the next. These three tenements on Bielowskiego Street (5, 7 and 9 Lesia Kurbas) were united by a single compositional idea. Here we see one of the flagship motifs of early Art Nouveau - decorative female masks, occupying a prominent place in the façade composition. The palmetto frieze crowning the central part of the composition, or if you prefer, the frieze of chestnut leaves, can be found on the flagship work of the Lviv Art Nouveau - the façade of the Segal building. Chestnut leaves became the leitmotif of the only Art Nouveau façade on the Market Square, formed as a result of the reconstruction of Ernest Ebner's house (3 Straczenych St.) in 1908 (architect Felicjan Bajan).

In the Stanislawski area we are also dealing with currents originating from Art Nouveau premises. These are examples demonstrating an interest in the folk crafts of the region, falling within the framework of the search for national styles, but also the already mentioned late Art Nouveau with its geometric variety and the related semi-modernism around 1910.

Around 1910, Stanislavovsk's building industry reached its peak in terms of quantity and quality. The dearth of land, caused by a shortage of building plots in the central part of the city, had a decisive impact on the height of the houses. The first large-scale townhouses were thus being built, which already gave a certain characteristic to their surroundings and encouraged their imitation. In Stanislavov, a formed executive environment was established during this time and a sufficient material base developed. Private capital increased, which was reflected in the mass construction of townhouses at the time. Private capital increased, which was reflected in the massive construction of townhouses at the time. Investors from the Jewish community took the lead.

The house, built on the former Trinczers' plot by engineer Jakub Katz, is one of the pinnacle examples of mature Art Nouveau in Stanislavov (Nezalezhnosti 30) located between two converging streets Katz's house has two facades. The façade facing Sapezhynska Street, housing a representative portal, as well as the second façade facing Sobieskiego Street, enjoy the freshness of an original differentiation of the façade's composition through the use of artistically diverse protuberances and sinks. The surfaces of both façades, as is customary in Stanislavov, have practically no floral decorations.

Among the more interesting examples are the Feibisch Israel Katz tenements, grandly constructed at the junction of Kazimierzowska Street (Hetmana Mazepy 36) and Batory Street (Korol Danylya 1) in 1910.

The most important buildings of Stanislavov, built between 1911 and 1912, being examples of Geometric Art Nouveau, gradually declared a departure from ornamentation in the name of the logic of material and construction. This period became a moment of transformation of style from the vigorous Art Nouveau to the logic of classicising forms, foreshadowing the functionalism that blossomed in the interwar period.

Time of origin:
1902-1914
Creator:
Jan Tomasz Kudelski (architekt; Polska)(preview), Felicjan Bajan (architekt), Jakub Katz (inżynier)
Author:
Żaneta Komar
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